All The Queen's Horses
by Drucilla
Summary: An old friend gets caught between two rivals. All the queen's horses and all the queen's men couldn't put Eckhart back together again... but that doesn't mean he isn't going to try. *COMPLETE!* Please read and review
1. Prologue

**All The Queen's Horses: Black Rose Stables   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Disclaimer: I don't own Mason, Adam, or anyone else in Mutant X. I do own Angelique and all of Black Rose Stables, at least in fiction if not in fact (oh how I wish I had those stables in fact). Reviews are welcome, flames will be ignored. Something I started a while ago that I might actually finish now. 

Angelique Delacroix got the call at 6:30 am, which would have been an unusual time for anyone else. For her, it was half an hour into her morning workout, and she was already out at her indoor training ring with one of her yearlings, training the horse to saddle, bridle, and lunge-line. It did annoy her that she had to leave the horse in the middle of a session that was really going quite spectacularly well; she had been responsive all morning and was only getting better. Still, this might be a client she would need to take care of. Angelique led the horse to the edge of the ring and then hit the button for the first line, picking up the phone and propping it on her shoulder. "Black Rose Stables, Delacroix speaking."

"Angel?" 

She knew that voice. She resisted the urge to hang up, knowing that she'd regret it later. "Adam, what the hell do you want? I'm busy."

"We need to talk, Angel. It's about Mason."

The woman frowned as her uneasiness communicated itself to her horse, and the young mare became restive, restless. "I told you, I'm through. I'm out. I quit ten years ago. Whatever you two are up to these days I don't want to know about it."

"Angel, have you been watching the news lately?"

She thought back, knowing what he was talking about. The company they had all worked for had grown surprisingly successful in the last ten years. She could have made serious money if she'd stayed, but she'd wanted to devote more time to her horses. Then, after hearing what had happened with Mason and Adam's sudden disappearance from the company, as well as all the other rumors and news stories of genetically enhanced and engineered humans, she had started to think she was well quit of that company. Sometimes she wondered, though, what would have happened if she hadn't left.

"Angel?"

"Yeah, I'm here. What do you want?"

"I need your help. I need to get in touch with Mason."

"Forget it. I shouldn't even be talking to you, Adam." He sounded sincere. She wasn't any happier for it.

"Why? Did he threaten you?" Now he sounded genuinely outraged that Mason would do something like that. He didn't sound surprised, though. Angelique wondered what the two of them had been up to.

"No, he didn't threaten me. He hasn't contacted me. He," she said pointedly, "has respected my wishes and stayed out of my life, let me live apart from whatever I did at Genomex."

"Angel, Mason is hunting down innocent men and women and using them for his experiments. He's become extremely bitter about what happened to him and he's taking that out on the people Genomex illegally experimented on."

Angelique just stared at the phone. It sounded like something out of the X-Files, and she told him so. "Adam, whatever Mason has or hasn't done, that doesn't mean you need to drag me into it. You are not the police, you are not the FBI, you can't subpoena me and make me do anything. When some legal body calls to arrest me or subpoena me or whatever, then you can talk. Not before." Angelique was starting to get annoyed, both at the man on the other end of the line and at herself for not hanging up when she should have.

  
***  
  
Dressage. Out in the ring she was queen of her tiny kingdom, working her baby on the lunge line and trying out his paces. He was two years old and trained to a fair-thee-well, the first of his generation of the new adaptations she'd made to the genetics of the breed. Tiny Dancer was his name. 

The Friesian Horse Administration had given her the all-clear on her project to modify the breed, remove some of the dangerous genetic traits and breed in new, better ones. Probably a good thing all around, since her modifications had begun a decade before she'd told them. But then, they didn't have to know that. It hadn't become noticeable in a surface check until recently. 

Dancer arched his neck proudly, showing off… Angelique didn't know for whom. Possibly for her, possibly for any of the half-dozen Friesian mares she had in the small stable. Possibly for any of the rest. In addition to breeding the Friesians, she also orchestrated and sometimes ran a program that taught children of abusive or neglectful homes how to ride, giving them something to latch on to that was just too plain dumb to be anything other than nice to them. Well, not too plain dumb. Most of her horses were actually highly intelligent, and she had known horses that were both dumb and amazingly mean. 

Angelique ran the stallion through his paces, trot, walk, canter. Flying lead changes every other lap. Dancer was amazing, and he picked up on things faster than she'd ever thought possible. The intelligence in his clear brown eyes made her warm to the tips of her fingers. On an impulse, she signaled him to stop and walked over, unclipping the lunge-line and looping it over her shoulder. 

"We're going to try something new today, baby," she told him, patting him on the neck and scratching him lightly under his chin. "Stand."

She walked back out to the center of the ring and held out her hand forward, palm down. "Walk," she told him, and began to turn. After a few seconds he did, following the path her hand indicated, looking at her curiously. She began to grin. "Trot."

He followed, increasing his pace and changing as she directed. Her arm raised as the speed increased, and as the horse began to catch on he arches his head and flagged his tail, putting on a performance that would have made Richard Donner proud. Beat that, Othello.

Finally she slowed him down. She'd given him enough of a workout today that he didn't blow out his sides as much as she usually did when she saddled him, and she rode him along the edges of the pastures quickly, performing only a cursory check. The phone call from Adam earlier had made her tired enough that she just wanted to go to bed. She suspected Tiny Dancer felt the same way, from the way he was constantly looking barn-wards. After they'd made their rounds she directed him up to the stables, dismounted and collected the tack, hosed him off and dried him down. He didn't even object as he walked placidly back into the large stall that was marked with child's drawings in praise of the horse.

Angelique dropped the saddle and bridle off in the tack room, hanging them up on their allocated peg. The pump dropped a couple of gallons of cold water on her head and woke her up long enough for her to get up to the house. Messages on her machine made her frown. She hadn't been gone that long.

"Angel, honey, it's Adam. Please, pick up the phone. I really need to talk to you." A pause. "All right, I guess you're out with your horses. I'll try back later." 

She deleted the message and glared at the machine.

"Angel… okay, you're still out. Look, it's important that I get in touch with you. There are things you need to know."

She deleted the message. She pondered throwing it against the wall.

"Angel…" Delete. "Angel…" Delete. "Look, I…" Delete.

Angelique sighed. Five messages. The man was persistent… at least some things hadn't changed. A lot hadn't changed, really. Mason was still a recluse and Adam was still a busybody in what (in mitigation, at least) he thought was everyone's best interest. But she had left the company years ago, and it was far too late in the game now to drag her into it. The only thing hearing from Adam had done apart from annoy her was to make her curious what Mason was doing these days. She flipped through her mail, thinking. 

The horse show was coming up in a couple of weeks. Dancer was just about ready to show, as was Satin and the irrepressible (as usual) Kid Stealth. Which reminded her to check and make sure he hadn't gotten out of his stall _again_. Screw it. She could figure that out later. 

She scribbled a note to herself and trooped up to bed. The day had been too long already. But she would have to remember to invite Mason to the horse show, anyway, as one old co-worker to another. It was something he could attend without anyone getting particularly curious. Especially Adam, damn the man.

She kicked her shoes off and curled up under the covers without even bothering to undress. A good day for the horses, but it had been a bad day for her. Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Maybe.


	2. At The Starting Gate

**All The Queen's Horses: At The Starting Gate   
by Drucilla  
**

  
The show had already begun by the time the man arrived. He presented his invitation at the gate and was shown to a box high in the stadium, a patron's box, he presumed. He was mildly impressed that she had secured such a place. He hadn't thought her resources stretched that far. The box was private, climate controlled and sanitized almost to the point that the labs at his corporation were. He smiled thinly, mildly amused. 

Mason Eckhart, though exceedingly knowledgeable in the field of human genetics, was at a loss when it came to the rules and procedures of a specialized horse show. For that matter, he wasn't even really sure why he'd come to the show today. She'd always been enthusiastic about her horses though. Some days, when he thought about her at all (and that was rare, anymore), he thought that the only reason she had been a part of Genomex was to improve her precious animals, to make them even more intelligent and capable. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, if it made her happy, and it was fairly harmless. Unlike their other pursuits…

Eckhart scowled, running a hand along his jaw. Some day someone was going to pay for what had happened, for the mistakes that had been made. 

The name announced over the loudspeaker brought his train of thought to a halt. His attention returned to the events at hand, and he watched as a familiar tiny figure on a horse that seemed that much larger by comparison rode out into the arena. The stadium fell quiet as a sexless voice over the loudspeaker announced the horse, the rider, the stable that both represented, the horse's bloodlines and the rider's accomplishments. Eckhart arched his eyebrows in surprise; her list of accomplishments had grown significantly in the past years. The audience was apparently impressed too, though he couldn't tell if the murmurs were directed at the woman or at the horse. The routine started. Eckhart leaned forward.

The dressage routine was almost more like dancing than horseback riding. The moves were pure equestrian art. He didn't know the names for them anymore; at one point she had talked about the sport so much that he couldn't have forgotten them if he'd wanted to. The scientist found himself leaning forward, concentrating, trying to remember what this turn was called or what it means when the horse did that or whether or not her form was correct. The judges certainly seemed to be impressed, and when the routine finally ended there was a low roar of adulation from the crowd. She dismounted in the center of the ring, taking off her helmet to a waterfall of deep black hair that matched the horse's, bowing as the horse bowed (which was an impressive feat in and of itself). He had the feeling it wasn't regulation, but it looked damn good. 

When the showing was over, he asked directions down to the stables to congratulate her. She was already amidst a sea of people, so he hung around on the outskirts until they had mostly dissipated. Not that he minded; it gave him a chance to watch her in her element, to get used to her once again. It had been so long since he'd even thought about her that he'd completely forgotten what she was like, her mannerisms, the way she kept brushing her hair back, the way she stood. Her devotion to her animals. Even now, amidst a circle of admirers and idolaters, she was paying more attention to her horse than she was to them. He thought sourly that that had always been her problem. More devoted to her damn animals than she was to the human race. That was Adam's problem, too…

He took several deep breaths. This was not a mood he wanted to confront her in. He waited until he was calmer, and until the crowd of people had dispersed a little more. Then he approached her, while she was turned to the horse, removing the saddle. He cleared his throat. "Angelique?"

She turned. "Mason!" She sounded actually happy to see him, which was surprising. "It's good to see you. I didn't think you'd actually accept the invitation; I know you don't leave the facility much, anymore." She stepped forward, to hug him it seemed, and he stepped back out of reflex. She looked slightly crestfallen. Eckhart was confused. He hated being confused, about anything. 

"I was curious. It has, after all, been quite a while since any of us have seen or heard from you." 

"Fourteen years, four months, twenty seven days." She smiled and turned to lead her horse into the temporary stables set up for the contestants' use. A glance over her shoulder indicated him to follow, although he was wary about going in to the building itself. 

"You counted the days?" he asked archly. 

"I made the numbers up." She turned and placidly began to give her horse a thorough rub-down. "I'm glad you came," she smiled slightly, not looking at him. "It's been, as you said, a long time."

"Why now?" he asked after a bit. It had been one of the most prevalent questions in his mind since he'd received the invitation, but now seemed an appropriate time to ask without raising suspicions. She shrugged slightly, not giving any sort of answer with her body language. Then again, she was mostly hidden behind the horse. "Something came up… business calls that reminded me of GenomeX and the old days. I thought about seeing where you were, giving you a call… eventually decided that this was safer for both of us."

Mason frowned slightly, glad she couldn't see it. That was more of an enigmatic answer than he'd expected or wanted, and without much opening for him to pry. "Safer?"

Angelique popped up on the other side of the horse, who pawed at the ground. "In case … I don't know. I heard you got married." She smiled slightly.

"Briefly." He really didn't want to say anything more on that topic. 

"Well, in case something like that. Or… other pleasant or unpleasant surprises." She looked him over very deliberately, and he shifted uncomfortably. She'd grown up, or at least grown much more cynical, in the years since they'd last spoken. "I suppose the most surprising thing is that neither of us have changed that much," she continued as if nothing had happened, gently brushing out the horse's mane. 

"I suppose I'm too busy to change," Mason offered as a way of getting her off the subject of what he was up to now. "You've come a long way from where you used to be. Horses?"

She laughed, applying halter to horse and leading him into the gigantic stall. "It's not too far. You always knew I was horse-crazy. Thanks to GenomeX and all my training I'm now more equipped than ever before to breed out negative or harmful traits, clean out the bloodlines a little. I can also tinker a bit to improve the intelligence and stamina of the horses while sacrificing none of their conformation. The _Friese Paarden Stamboek_ thinks my work could be very helpful. At least, they did when I finally told them about it." She smiled conspiratorially. 

Mason blinked a little at the onslaught of equestrian terms. "The what?" 

"The Studbook. The organization that controls the bloodlines of the Friesian." 

"Oh…" he said faintly. Memories came flooding back to him, the logo of the letter she had received one giddy afternoon, the notification that her genetically-altered stallion had been accepted as a stallion, with approved breeding privileges. She had been so happy at the notification – he could still feel the touch of her lips on his cheek, the pressure of her hands on his shoulders when she'd jumped up and down, laughing with delight…

She was staring. He shook his head slowly. "You know those breeding and competition terms confuse me."

Angelique nodded, but she still looked skeptical. She gave the horse a last pat on the neck and walked out, latching the stall door shut behind her. "I have a little time before my ride home. Dinner?"

Mason opened his mouth to make a polite excuse and back away. "All right." He frowned slightly. He'd been sure he'd meant to say, No thank you I have to get to a meeting. 

She smiled. She actually still seemed genuinely happy to see him again. Something was clearly wrong with the world. No one was happy to see him, not even his …

"Angel…" They both turned. Mason smiled unpleasantly, the ulterior motive out at last, he decided. Adam was walking up the corridor, looking determinedly grim. Angelique did not look pleased to see him, but that was most likely because he'd jumped whatever gun she was hiding. 

"What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay away." Angelique glared. Suddenly the day was looking ever so much worse, and it was all Adam's fault again.

"Look, I just wanted to talk to you, all right? Besides, you've obviously heard Eckhart's side of the story." He glared at the pale man beside her, who smirked and glared in return. Angelique made a noise of disgust that sounded very equine.

"I haven't heard anyone's side of any story. You interrupted my attempt to get caught up on the last fourteen years, since you obviously weren't willing to do so in any sort of civil manner." She looked from one of them to the other. "And since the two of you seem more intent on reviving old rivalries than telling me just what the hell is going on, I might as well be talking into the wind for all the good it's doing me to try and convince you two otherwise."

"Eckhart is a dangerous, sadistic…"

"Adam is obviously suffering from delusions…"

The horse kicking at the door of his stall interrupted them both. Angelique smiled grimly. "Thank you, Dancer. I feel much the same way." She glared impartially from one to the other and, for a miracle, they both shut up. "I don't care who did what to whom for how many Twinkies. I told you both years ago that if you two insist on staying fifteen and playing stupid, childish, macho games with each other than you can just count me the hell out of it." 

"It's not…" Adam tried. The stallion screamed. Angelique looked like he was going to hit him. He shut up. "Fine." He left.

Mason stared at her. She'd definitely changed since he'd seen her last. Perhaps for the better, at least for him. "Angelique…" he started, moving towards her as though out of sympathy, or perhaps in apology. He thought briefly about apologizing and then quashed the thought, angry at himself for even entertaining the idea.

She, however, was having none of it. She brushed his hand aside with the back of her hand and the contact left his whole forearm tingling slightly. "Mason, just go. It's too late for that."

He stared at her as she picked up her tack and grooming kit and stared down the opposite end from where Adam had left. Evidently she really wasn't going to hear what either of them had to say unless they said it in a somewhat peaceful manner. This might prove to be actually difficult. And why was his arm tingling… he shook his head and started out. Behind him he could still hear the sounds of her restless horses, as though they knew what was going on and wanted to drive their hooves through his skull. That was what it felt like anyway. It was uncanny. A brief thought crossed his mind; it occurred to him to wonder something he'd never thought of before. If she had tampered with the genetics of her horses, given the experiments that they had been working on… what mutant talents could the horses possess, if any? What had she done to her beloved creatures?


	3. Going Through The Paces

**All The Queen's Horses: Going Through the Paces   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except Angelique and her horses. Please don't sue me, I don't have any money. Thanks to all who reviewed, I'm glad you guys liked it! I'll try and write more.

"All right. Who was she?" Shalimar asked Adam, staring intently at him. "I saw how you all reacted to each other. Who is she?"

Adam was staring at a picture of a young woman, taken twenty, thirty years ago, seemingly ignoring his ward. Finally he spoke. "Delacroix was a biologist, fresh out of grad school, working with Genomex about twenty years ago. She was a genius – college at 15, graduated at 17 – obsessed, almost, with animal biology and her horses…" He scrolled through her file, assembled both from what they had discovered at Mutant X and what GenomeX had on her. It was surprisingly scant. "She came to work at GenomeX through an internship program. She wanted to improve domestic animals and plants, make them better and more useful without turning them into something they weren't supposed to be."

"Like what scientists are doing now."

"Sort of. She did it… more subtly, though. Not with cloning, or only selective breeding. She … had a special gift for adapting the strands of DNA so that things would turn out, if not actually good, at least not horribly mutated." Adam scrolled down. It looked as though she was doing well for herself. Shalimar looked over his shoulder.

"Getting back on the horse?"

Adam glanced at her with wry irritation. "Looks like it's a proposal she wrote up for a second chance program based at her stables. She wrote it six years ago, looks like the program's doing pretty well now."

Shalimar snorted. "She can't be as good as she seems."

Adam glanced at her again, this time with more amusement. "You're a little young to be so cynical, aren't you?" She gave him a very direct Yeah-And? look. "She had her faults. Don't get me wrong. She had a way of surprising everyone with brutal pragmatism when we least expected it. I bet she could give even Eckhart a run for his money on that, sometimes. But most of the time she didn't think it would be a good practical solution. I think most of her really horrifying suggestions were theories, not fact."

"Like?" Shalimar folded her arms. Clearly, she'd put Angelique in the 'don't trust her' category, lumped in with Eckhart it seemed like. Despite what her mentor was saying, she clearly thought he was seeing the woman through two-inch thick rose-colored glasses.

"Well…" he hesitated. "She had this theory about breeding programs for humans. Something about how not all humans were good parents, and we were breeding ourselves into over population and extinction. She talked about licensed childbirth, when the subject came up."

Shalimar gave her mentor a look as if to say, I told you so.

"She never thought badly of the children because of parental stupidity, though," Adam pointed out, tapping the computer screen with a finger. "This whole second chance program is fairly typical. She always used to say, it was the responsibility of those of us cleverer than the average to save humanity from it's own stupidity."

The cat woman shook her head. "Second chance program, my..."

"What program?" Brennan wanted to know as he walked up, toweling the sweat from the back of his neck. Adam sighed and put the file on the projector. "Oh…her. I heard about her. Mackie used to talk about her all the time. She made him horse-crazy… he used to hang around the stables. I guess his Mom thought it was better than hanging around the rest of us." He quirked a wry grin. "Looking back on it I can see why."

"She used to work for GenomeX," Shalimar said without any preamble. Brennan did a slight double-take.

"Oh. So are we going after her, now?"

"_Used_ to work for GenomeX," Adam corrected with a pointed stare at Shalimar. "She left the labs fourteen years ago."

"From the conversation you had with her, she left under less than pleasant circumstances," Brennan cocked an eyebrow at the older man. "I could hear the tension all the way up in the Double Helix. She really doesn't like you two, does she?"

"Two?" Shalimar wanted to know. "She gets along fine with Eckhart."

"She told him to stuff off," Brennan pointed out. "That's not exactly getting along fine."

"What's her connection to Eckhart?" Emma asked. Shalimar, Brennan, and Adam glanced around at her. The young empath was leaning against the wall and watching them. It was even odds how much of the conversation she'd heard. 

"Well, we all worked together. What Eckhart and I lacked in elegance we made up for in innovation." He smiled wryly, but it disappeared quickly as the humor left his face. "She always said our penchant for wild experiments would get us into trouble some day."

Emma shook her head. "Not like that. I mean, what's her specific connection to Eckhart?"

The other three stared at her. "What do you mean?" Adam asked.

"I don't know… she was pleased to see him again, but really careful. Like she knew what he was, or as though he'd done something really bad in the past. And…" Emma hesitated, searching for words. "He feels really strongly about her. Not love, not exactly. Something… A lot of things. All confused."

"So he used to be in love with her and then he went all psycho. And since she didn't, he can't relate to her." Brennan theorized.

"Maybe."

Adam stared at Emma and Brennan incredulously. He hadn't even thought about her in years, not until the intercepted e-mail that had made him think… but… "There were rumors about them, a long time ago. I didn't think about it at the time, but I suppose they could have been. Then again, there were rumors about her and everyone at the time. She was a beautiful woman. I guess we all wanted some part of her."

"Maybe he still wants her," Brennan postulated. "It's not like he's not already obsessive. What's one more target?"

Adam shook his head slowly. "I don't think that's it. They never acted… close. And I know you can't always tell, but ten years… I don't think that's it. I think it's something else. Maybe you're right," he looked at Brennan, "Maybe it is just obsession. But why now, after all those years?"

"That's what he asked her," Emma commented. She had wrapped her arms around herself and was staring at the floor, shivering. "I don't know. But when you three all got together… It gave me the creeping jeebies." She looked up at Adam with a gaze intense enough to make even him step back. Shalimar and Brennan stared at the empathic woman, startled. "There's history between the three of you, even if you don't know it."

Adam sighed. "And even if there is, she's not going to tell me. Not right now, anyway. I shouldn't have been so adamant about talking to her, but I thought it was urgent, I thought she was in immediate danger. I guess…"

Emma shook her head slowly. "I don't know what the e-mail was all about, but I don't think she's in danger from Eckhart. Not in the way you mean. Besides, she's not a mutant. She's a scientist, but he's got tons of scientists working for him already. I don't think he's interested in her that way."

"So what is he interested in her for?" Brennan wanted to know. 

Adam stared at the picture on the screen. Fourteen years, and it felt like they'd never passed. She looked like they hadn't passed, from what he remembered of their brief meeting at the show. She looked very much the same as she had when the picture was taken. "I don't know."

"When we know, we'll know how to stop him," Shalimar said firmly. Brennan winced, and Adam and Emma exchanged uneasy glances.

"Maybe we will," Adam said slowly. "Maybe we won't. Finding out what he wants is going to be harder than ever, this time. This time, it's not about Mutant X or GenomeX or anything like that. I think this time…" he trailed off. 

Emma finished his thought with uncanny accuracy. "This time, it's personal."


	4. Jumping Fences

**All The Queen's Horses: Jumping Fences   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Disclaimer: None of Mutant X belongs to me. If Adam and Mason belonged to me I'd bash their heads together. Please review! Reviews are happy, and from this point on I only have the faintest idea of where this story's going, so input is appreciated. 

The horses were restless. They had always been able to sense her moods, and though today had gone well enough in the ring the confrontation between her, Mason, and Adam had left a very bad taste in her mouth. Angelique bid her horses farewell, leaving them a last treat, and started out of the stables.

It was just far enough to her hotel room that she had to drive there. Far enough for maybe three or four songs on the car's CD player. Really, she could have taken closer quarters, but all things considered she preferred the isolation, the solitude. It made her much less edgy. She put on something soothing to try and settle her down, even if she did still want to go hit something. Men. Why did men have to be so stupid sometimes? No wonder she preferred the company of horses. They were much less stupid in much less complex and annoying ways.

Angelique had always preferred the company of animals to humans. In part that was why she had ended up becoming a researcher; no one questioned why a researcher chose to spend her time around her animals. She'd thought Mason had shared that trait, and become attracted to him as she never thought she would. After a while, after a few years, though, she'd realized he was just unpleasant and generally petty. She left him alone, then, though it always nagged at her right up until she left the company, why was he so sullen and withdrawn?

Get a grip, she told herself. Can't heal the world. She repeated it to herself now. Can't heal the world. Can't save it from itself. All you can do is try to fix things, one person at a time. Angelique smiled slightly to herself. It had been that same philosophy which had driven her to start her second change program. Every young girl loved horses, and every young boy loved young girls. It was a way to boost their self esteem, get them off the drugs, get them to believe in their own power, in healthier power. Thinking about the program made her smile again.

She walked into her hotel room a great deal more cheerful than she had left the car, flipped on the lights and flopped onto the bed. There wasn't much on the television late at night, but she could stand watching old reruns of ER till she fell asleep. A blinking light told her she had a message.

"Angel, it's Adam. Don't hang up in the middle, I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone off like that. Not without … well. I shouldn't have gone off like that."

"No, you shouldn't," she grumbled at the machine, her head starting to ache again. The message continued.

"I sent you some files, to the business address on your web page. I didn't know how else to reach you. Read them if you want, then come talk to me. If you don't… well, I guess I understand." A pause. "See you later."

"Not if I see you first." She sighed. At least he'd left it up to her, and hadn't been so damn pushy about it this time. That, she thought, was what had been annoying about it. He'd been so pushy, so insistent that he was right. He hadn't used to be quite that… demanding. 

Angelique frowned. Adam never did anything without a reason, and if he was acting this upset… She sat up, fired up her laptop, connected it to the hotel and downloaded her e-mail from her business account.

Her eyes grew wide as she read the files Adam had sent her. Angry, hot tears began to tickle her cheeks. She knew things had gotten out of hand, but this… this was beyond comprehension. This was beyond even the stupidity she normally ascribed to humanity. About three quarters of the way through she shut down the computer and went out to stand on the small porch, staring up at the moon. Or rather, lack of one: it was a new moon. A dark moon, they used to call it. It figured. Dark moon for dark tidings.

  
  
  
Adam wandered around atop the roof… or what passed for it… of the complex in which he and his protégés lived and worked. It was two a.m. and he still couldn't sleep. The conversation… be fair, he told himself, it was more of a confrontation than a conversation. And if he'd started out the _first_ conversation with "I'm worried about Mason" or "How've you been?" it probably would have gone so much better. He sighed. Sometimes he forgot that, just because old friends had worked for GenomeX as well, they hadn't gone through what he had towards the last few months at GenomeX. Working there didn't automatically convey understanding of Eckhart's character. Not that he thought Angelique mistook him. But she had no idea what was really going on.

It looked like she had done well for herself, at least. He only had the vaguest knowledge of horse breeding, dressage, and riding, but her horses parading in second and first place more often than not had to be good. And she was well off, financially, if set back in a remote corner of the state. But then, she'd always liked it best alone.

She hadn't married. He wasn't sure whether to think that was odd or figure that it was her solitudinous habits. Even Eckhart had married, though he couldn't think why or how he'd convinced some woman to marry him. He had three children, though you'd never think it to know the man. 

Adam sighed, heading back down into the main complex. It wasn't doing him any good to dwell on things. He'd sent her the files, including the e-mail as a last little … he didn't know what. Nudge, maybe, or a plea for her attention. At least she could now make an informed decision. She'd read them, he knew. Her curiosity would get the better of her, and she could never stay mad for long when the object of her anger refused to continue the idiotic behavior.

He wondered how she would react to the e-mail. He wondered if she would believe it, or if he was in for another rant about how could he believe that about someone they worked with for so long. He wondered if she would just dismiss it entirely and not reply, if he would never hear from her again. It wasn't likely, but it was possible. Frankly, after fourteen years he was in no position to predict what she might do or not do. 

He looked over at the main lounge where Brennan and Emma were arguing about something and making hot chocolate. Adam shook his head, smiling, as Emma socked Brennan playfully on the arm and the other man pretended to wince. Angelique would like them, he thought absently. They were very like the teenagers she dealt with, only with the problems of most people twice their age. She would like them, he decided abruptly, if he could only get her to join Mutant X… 

Emma looked up at him suddenly. Brennan didn't notice, it was a brief glance, but it made Adam take a step back. It was an admonishing glance almost, and a cautioning one, as if she had caught him thinking or feeling things that could be dangerous for them all. It was also the last thing he'd expected, especially from her. Still, if she was worried about his views on Angelique… 

Adam frowned. His children were growing up fast, nearly faster than he could keep up with. He'd have to talk with Emma later. This was turning out to be something none of them could deal with alone, and he didn't know why. It made him uneasy, and a little bit afraid. He walked back up, outside, feeling a sudden need for fresh air and stars. It wasn't a clear night, however. Nothing to see in the sky but dark clouds. 

Adam shivered, hoping it wasn't a portent of things to come.

  
  
  
Ekhart stormed into the computer lab like an angry wind, scattering scientists and technicians in his wake. He cleared the room with a furious shout, locked the door behind the last fleeing person. He stared murderously at the blank wallscreen, as though it was responsible for his problems. His hands shook with rage. Slowly, after several deep breaths, he punched in a string of command codes and brought up the file now more than ten years out of date on Angelique Delacroix. 

He forced himself to calm down as the computer took its time pulling up the files from the ancient archives. Video footage, audio recordings, photographs and pages and pages of text. He pulled it all up, downloaded it into a folder to go through later, and started opening things at random. After a while he sat down; this was going to be a long night if for no other reason than he was too charged up to go home.

Eckhart stared at the pictures, flipping through them slowly, reading the cold and technical captions underneath. He thought wryly that the captions didn't do her justice – she had been one of the most vibrant people he'd known. Still was, for that matter, he thought, and then he pushed the thought out of his mind. "Dr. Delacroix and subject X271." "Dr. Delacroix and subject X365, post treatment." "Dr. Delacroix, Dr. Eckhart, Dr…" That had been that hideous conference. He skipped by it, scowling.

Text files began to appear. Psychological profiles of her, some of them concerned and some of them glowing with pride. She was the ideal researcher, perfectly willing to put in 20 hour work-days in the labs and in the pens if it needed to happen. She was also reclusive, quiet when she wasn't working, withdrawn, and held some decidedly socially and politically inappropriate views. They couldn't decide whether she was a sociopath or a quiet saint. Probably the most confusing parts of both, he decided.

Her psych file was larger than his. His eyebrows arched with wry amusement and moderate startlement. He'd been called cold, machine-like, sociopathic often enough that he generally expected to be evaluated to death whenever the management or the board of directors took it into their heads to do so. He hadn't thought they'd been as concerned about her. Briefly he wondered if Adam had a similar file. Probably not. Adam was a boy scout, born and bred.

Another surprising thing: her file contained video as well as audio and photo. They weren't marked with any sort of descriptive file label, just the date and in some cases a letter where presumably the footage had been taken on the same day. The files looked like security videos. What the hell had everyone been up to? He pulled up a file at random, frowning, curious. And then he pulled up another. And another. Unable to believe what it was he was seeing, or perhaps just unwilling to accept it, he watched screen after screen of footage anywhere from five to fifteen minutes in length.

He watched as tiny Angelique walked in, microwaved a pot of something, and placed it firmly in front of tiny Ekhart, who was asleep with his head on the kitchen counter. He watched tiny Angelique run her fingers softly through tiny Ekhart's hair, staring. He'd never even suspected this footage existed, though he'd remembered her waking him up numerous times and nearly forcing him to eat. Looking at it now, he supposed this was why it was in her psych profile file. She'd never done anything like this where anyone could see, he was sure. He wondered what else she'd done when no one could see…

The intercom beeped. "Sir. Sir, security wishes to know how long you're going to be." Eckhart glanced at the clock. 5:45 am. He didn't even know how long he'd been sitting there, staring at the woman on the screen. 

"I'm just leaving," he said after a short while, and he started to shut down the computers. "I won't be in until later today."

"I gathered that, sir," the front desk muttered in tones that Eckhart was sure he wasn't supposed to overhear. And he let it go; he was feeling too drained to deal with it tonight. Tomorrow. Everything could happen tomorrow. He had time, he could wait. But he _was_ going to find out what it was all about. There had been too many revelations to leave it alone, and too many unanswered questions.


	5. Upset

**All The Queen's Horses: Upset   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Disclaimer/Author's Note: I don't own Jesse or Adam. I don't own Mutant X. Please don't sue me, I'll return them in good condition when I'm done, I promise. I own Angelique, body blood and soul. You can use her if you ask me first. :)

Angelique made her way through the next morning on auto-pilot, not paying too much attention to what she was doing except that it was the same routine she usually got into when she was on the road. Shower. Breakfast on the run, getting dressed while checking the weather. Checking her e-mail and phone for messages. Neither of the two men had called since Adam's message, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or worried. For that matter, she wasn't entirely sure what she planned to do about the whole situation in the first place. Much less how she was going to do it.

They both needed their heads bashed in. Preferably by smashing them together. 

Angelique sighed, grabbing her stuff as she ran out the door, making sure she had her hotel key, as usual, just after the door slammed shut. Fortunately she did have it. One of these days, she thought ruefully, she was going to lock herself out of her room.

As she was walking down the hall to the door closest to where her car was parked she caught a flash of white hair. Blond, she realized after a few seconds worth of blinking. Blonde. Not white. It occurred to her that the invitation lasted for the entire run of the show. She wondered if he'd put in another appearance. She wondered if she'd be eager to see him or avoid him.

This wasn't getting her anywhere. Angrily, she pushed the door open and went out to her car. Adam's files were truly terrible, but she didn't have the faintest idea what she could do about it. Establish safe-houses? Fight the goons? She wasn't combat-trained. She didn't have any skills that Adam must want, except possibly those as a biologist and a geneticist. But he couldn't know…

The semi in front of her swerved. Except there hadn't been a semi two seconds before. She had barely enough time to slam the accelerator and yank the steering wheel, sending the car fishtailing across two lanes and into the shoulder, where she was abruptly pointing the other way. She shifted to fifth gear and high-tailed it down, then stopped so abruptly that she slammed her head into the steering wheel. 

"Ma'am?"

Someone was tapping on her window. How long had she been unconscious? She touched her forehead, checking the bleeding. Not much. Her fingertips sought the gash, her mind saw the cells of the torn skin and began repairing it automatically. A few seconds and it was a half-inch closed. 

"Ma'am? Are you all right?" There was another tapping at the window, and Angelique brought her hand down in a hurry. Cuts didn't close up by themselves, and the cop would definitely want to know what was going on if she abruptly healed a huge gash on her head right in front of him.

"Yes…" she rolled down her window, moving slowly so as not to upset her head. Now that she was moving more quickly she was starting to feel slightly nauseous. She slowed down. "Yes, I'm all right. Just a bump on the head."

He looked her over "That looks pretty serious, ma'am. You sure you don't want to see a doctor?"

She craned her neck around, looking over her shoulder. Her eyes widened as she saw what she had missed: a semi jumping the median and swerving into several cars. "_Sacre merde…_" she murmured.

"Yeah, it got pretty bad. No one got killed, though… thank God for that."

She nodded absently. "Yeah." 

"Would you please step out of the car, ma'am? I really think the paramedics ought to have a look at you." The cop was kind, but insistent. She supposed he was right. And anyway, if she hadn't been … well, what she was, she wouldn't have been able to heal the after-effects of the hit to the head. She suspected she still had a slight concussion. That would take some working on.

"All right…" she opened the door, the cop moving out of her way as she did so, and stepped out slowly. Very deliberately and with careful movements, she closed the door and followed the cop over to the ambulance where it looked like triage had been set up. 

"We got another one," the cop called over. "Not involved in the accident but it looked like she hit her head trying to get away from it." Angelique smiled slightly. 

"All right, bring her over," she heard from the other side of the ambulance. The cop took her arm, supported her over to where they were making people sit and be checked over on boxes of what looked like resuscitation equipment. She sat down and let the medic take a look at her.

"Pupil response normal…" she winced but let him shine the light in her eyes. "That's a nasty cut on your head."

Angelique gave him a rueful grin. "My steering wheel hates me. Particularly when I slam into it with my head."

"Hmm. Well, I'll bet your head hates you too. Pain?" She nodded, not daring to say otherwise. "Here…" The medic produced some packets of what looked like single-dose painkillers, the kind they gave you in hospitals. "Don't take these until you get home. And do go home, if you weren't already on your way there. You're in no shape to go to work today."

Angelique winced, as she would have if it had been true. She shouldn't ride with a concussion. Fortunately she wouldn't have it for long. "Yeah, Doc. I hear you."

He handed her a sample packet of Tylenol. "Take this for now. It'll help, and keep you focused enough to be able to drive. Feeling nauseous?" She shook her head. "Good. You should be safe to drive home. Take it easy when you get there, but don't go to sleep, no matter how much you may want to. When you feel a little better, have someone drive you to the hospital and get your head checked out. You might have some internal damage."

She didn't. But he couldn't know that. "Okay."

He smiled. "Good girl." She grinned up at him wryly. She knew she had to be older than him, and looked at least his age. 

"Can I go now, Doc?" she asked, smiling with eyes wide and disingenuous. 

"You can go," he chuckled. "Be careful on the roads. Extra careful." 

"Yes, sir," she grinned, and made her way back to the car. Luck was with her; she managed to avoid leaving her name with the cop and the paramedic, who both had worse injuries to deal with. She managed to make it to her car without falling over, then she closed her eyes and concentrated. Cells knit themselves back together, blood clotted and then was absorbed back into the stream, endorphines rushed through her system, all powered by her mind's control. A few minutes later she took a deep breath, started the car, shifted into gear and started creeping back down the highway.

That had been too damn close.

  
  
  
"Uh… Adam?" Jesse called out. His eyes were glued to the screen. "You're going to want to see this."

Adam didn't quite go down the stairs two at a time, but it wasn't for lack of enthusiasm or curiosity. The day had started out strange and just gotten stranger. And he hadn't slept more than two hours last night. He was on his fifth cup of coffee, just after his second cup of espresso, which was probably why the day was so strange. "What is it?"

"Well, it's… a car accident. But.. look."

He pointed. Adam watched what was apparently news footage, with Angelique walking unsteadily towards an ambulance. A few minutes later she emerged, walking back to her car. 

"A bad car accident, from the look of it," Adam commented, "But…"

"No, just watch…" Jesse insisted, and he zoomed in to where Angelique was getting back into her car. "Watch this."

The computer zoomed in on the image of her in the car. It focused, clarified it, and closed in on her face. Adam stared, marveling at how she hadn't seemed to age very much since she'd worked for GenomeX. She'd hit her head on something during the accident, blood was streaming down her forehead. Except… then she passed her hand over her forehead, wiping her face, and there was no cut. Not even a scar to show where a cut had been. 

"See?" Jesse said as he watched the expression on the older man's face.

"Go back a bit… slow it down," Adam reached over Jesse's shoulder and did it himself even as he was telling the young man to do it. He watched as Angelique touched her forehead, and the flesh seemed to knit itself together. Her eyes, too, seemed to clear, as though she was shaking off the last effects of one too many drinks… or a concussion. 

"I thought she wasn't a mutant," Jesse said, staring. 

"I didn't think she was," Adam frowned. "She's not in any database. She doesn't even register as one on any scan or test I looked up from GenomeX"

"Then what the hell is going on?"

Adam stared at the computer screen, watching the cut heal itself again, and again, and again. "I wish I knew, Jesse…" he murmured. "I wish I knew."


	6. Taking Stock

**All The Queen's Horses: Taking Stock   
by Drucilla  
**

  
"I'm not so sure this is a good idea…" 

Brennan glanced over his shoulder and gave Jesse a half-hearted dirty look. "Well we can't exactly go back now and tell Adam that we snuck out to see this woman and then chickened out at the last minute." Next to him Shalimar bounced from one foot to the other, eager to confront the woman she had decided was on Eckhart's side. Emma just stood behind and between the two of them, pensive. Finally Jesse shrugged, and they walked forward.

"_…what would your old friends say, if they could see you now…_" The dark-haired woman looked up, her song trailing off as her hands stilled on the guitar. "Yes?"

"We…" Brennan started, only to realize that Shalimar, Jesse, and Emma were all hanging behind him. He looked back, suddenly feeling very unsupported. "Hey, come on, guys." Angelique's slight chuckle didn't help any. "Uh…"

"We know you're a mutant," Shalimar burst out finally, though she had at least enough sense to keep her voice down so that no one would overhear. No one was paying attention anyway; everyone was concentrating on getting ready for the next event, making a fair amount of noise as they did so.

If the four of them had hoped for a reaction they were quite disappointed. Angelique only raised an eyebrow, and went back to plinking on her guitar. 

"When did it happen?" Emma asked quietly. Angelique sighed, set her guitar to one side, and leaned her forearms on her knees. "The unexplained genetic… mmm… expression?" She asked. Nods all around. "Are you sure you really want to know?" she smiled slightly. From their expressions that hadn't been an answer they'd expected, and they all looked at each other uneasily, as though expecting to be ambushed at any moment by either questions or GSA agents. 

"Look, we…" Jesse trailed off as Angelique stood up. She was tiny, but she had a presence about her that made all the Mutant X'ers feel very, very young. The older woman looked them over measuringly. 

"You really aren't ready for this," she concluded, and held up a hand to stop their protests as she shook her head wryly. "Adam. I swear, sometimes that man doesn't think to even open his eyes before he leaps. And now he's taken you all and thrown you into a world of… what? Fighting crime? Playing super-heroes? Without even training you for the emotional and mental requirements that that takes?" Brennan opened his mouth to object, shut it, and looked thoughtful. "Ever wonder why Batman couldn't have a successful love life if his career depended on it?"

"We knew what we were getting into when we signed on," Shalimar said, stung by what she saw as accusations and slights against a man she highly respected, from a woman she deeply mistrusted. "We're not stupid…"

Angelique shook her head. "I'm not saying you are. And I'm not saying that Adam is either, I'm just saying that he has a tendency not to think about certain sides of the equation he's working."

Emma nodded slowly, and Shalimar stared at her teammate as though she'd sold them out to the GSA. "You're not saying you're…"

"She's got a point, Shalimar. Think about it. We're not commandos, we weren't trained for any of this until we got into it deeper than we could get ourselves out of." Now Brennan was nodding, and Jesse was looking dismayed.

"Look," Angelique turned to her guitar case and pulled a set of keys out from it. She extracted a small rectangle of plastic from the jingling bundle and held it out to Brennan. "Take that. It's the key-card to the private box I keep in reserve in case I get some unexpected guests. Go up there, sit through the rest of the show. Then when the show's over, you can help me get everyone into the trailers, we'll go back to my place, and I can explain some certain facts of life to you. In exchange I'll tell you everything you or Adam might want to know about what's been going on."

She spoke with such authority that Brennan and Jesse were nodding before they realized they'd agreed. Emma looked thoughtful and agreed, dragging Shalimar along with her as the latter woman gave Angelique threatening glances over her shoulder. 

  
  
  
"How much do you really know about Adam and Mason?" Angelique asked as she set out glasses and an assortment of drinks, including Coke, Sprite, coffee, water, and some bizarre combination fruit juice that never occurred in nature. 

"Enough," Shalimar said before anyone else could, "to know whose side to choose."

"Ahhh…" Angelique said delicately, settling down in an overstuffed black leather armchair. She cupped in her hands a mug of hot tea, and sipped from it as she decided where to begin. "Did you know that his mother committed suicide when he was twelve? Or that his father worked for the army, in the position of chief medical officer specializing in the care of mentally unstable Marines and Marine vets?"

"Your point?" Shalimar asked, but Emma nodded thoughtfully, and Jesse looked slightly disturbed.

Angelique shrugged. "For now, no point. Except that one of the basic rules of hunting is to know your prey. And that, even if you aren't actually hunting him, if you and Adam are going to try and stop Eckhart in whatever delusional scheme he's worked up, you need to know more about him than just 'He's evil.'"

"It's not a delusion," Emma broke in. "It's real. He's out to… I don't know what. But he's capturing mutants and putting them in stasis pods…"

The older woman nodded. "I know. I didn't mean to imply that his scheme wasn't real, I meant that whatever reasons he has for it are probably based on delusions of persecution, grandeur, inadequacy, or something else equally ludicrous."

"Does it really matter why he's doing it?" Jesse wanted to know. "I mean… whatever his reasons, he's doing some really bad things. It doesn't make him any less evil if he's …" the young man trailed off, not quite sure how to say what he meant.

"Jesse, think about what you're saying here. Evil's a pretty strong word, are you sure you want to go around using it like that?" Angelique cautioned. "But I do know what you mean. He's doing horrible, cruel things, and whatever his reasons are he needs to be stopped. But reasons are as important as actions, perhaps even more so. Ends and means, you know that saying? The ends don't always justify the means? If you're attacking Eckhart just because you've decided he's evil… who will the next person be who's 'evil?' The big burly guy who beat up that skinny kid the other day? But what if that skinny kid was blackmailing the bigger guy? Or threatening his family?"

"So what you're saying is…" Brennan frowned slightly, trying to get a grasp on the enormity of the idea being laid before them. "You're agreeing that Eckhart's GSA and the stasis pods are bad," Angelique nodded. "You're agreeing that Eckhart needs to be stopped." Another nod. "But you're saying that we should think about what we're doing, and what he's doing, and what Adam's getting us to do, before we do anything?"

Angelique smiled slightly. "Dead-bang."

"But how can we get anything done if all we do is sit around talking about it?" Shalimar wanted to know. She sounded upset, but at least she was listening to the other woman. 

"How can you get anything done if you run around trying to do everything at once? You should know that by now. A little preparation ahead of time can save a lot of fixing later. That's all I'm saying, not that you should sit around inventing a new morality system to justify what you're doing. In fact, don't justify it at all. Just think about what you're doing, where it fits into your personal morality, and figure out if you're satisfied with it and if you can live with the consequences."

She sat back and let the young men and women of Mutant X digest that for a while. She'd given them a pretty hefty morsel to chew on, and she wanted to be sure it went down at least somewhat smoothly. Brennan looked like he was handling it all right, as was Emma. Jesse looked troubled, as though he wasn't sure what he thought about it, but at least he was engaged in the process of thinking. Shalimar, of all of them, looked least receptive. 

"You said," Emma started, drawing the older woman's attention. "You said that Adam wasn't teaching us right… what was he not teaching us? All this morality and ethics stuff?"

"Not… exactly." Angelique hedged. She wanted to be very careful at this point, wanted to get her message across without eroding their trust in their leader or each other. "He's been teaching you to react, and that's good. That's kept you alive for now, especially with the GSA and everyone else trying to capture you. But it's not enough to know how to react. You have to know how to think, and how to act as well."

"So that when we do act, we have the strength of our conviction behind us. We know what we're doing and why we're doing it…" Jesse said, getting it suddenly.

"… and you're that much stronger for it. Exactly." Angelique grinned, and Jesse looked particularly pleased with himself.

"And what does all this have to do with Eckhart?" Shalimar wanted to know. Angelique fixed her with a steady, relentless eye. 

"Eckhart has the courage of his convictions. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he is firmly convinced that he's right in doing it. Which is why you've gotten no further than you have, among other things. You also don't know nearly as much as you should about him, or about Adam. And while basing your judgments on their current actions is a damn good idea, you should also know about where they're coming from, to know where they're going."

Brennan scowled. "That …" he stopped, trailing off. "I can't believe Eckhart ever had any redeeming qualities. At all. That guy was born a jerk."

Angelique chuckled. She stood up, moving over to a closet set below the stairs, and rummaged through it for a little while. "Most days I would agree with you," she said from behind the door. "Back then as well as now. But there were little things, occasional things, that changed my mind. I used to … a-ha!" She pulled back, pulling out what looked like a hat-box and dusting it off as she closed the door of the closet with one foot. "I knew I had these in that closet somewhere."

"Oh no…" Jesse groaned. "What are those, baby pictures?"

Angelique started laughing, and after a while so did everyone. The thought of Mason Eckhart as a baby was just too hysterical, especially since most of the people in the room were picturing a tiny, grumpy-looking, wrinkle-faced baby with white hair and big pink sunglasses. "Not quite," she said, still chuckling. "They're … well, some of them are pictures. Some… well, here…" she put the box on the table and opened it up. "Take a look."

They did. It had old pictures, sure enough, of various combinations of Adam, Angelique, and Eckhart in the labs and outside of them. It had a small but pretty card with a horse on it, with 'Congratulations, M.' written inside in elegant handwriting. "That was after my first stallion was approved by the breeding administration," Angelique said. There was a receipt inside from what appeared to be a fairly lavish dinner. No need to ask what that was about. There were a few dried rose petals, an old, faded blue ribbon, not the kind awarded for prizes but the kind someone might put in their hair. Each one, it seemed, had a story, and Mutant X heard all the stories, until Angelique finally decreed it was too late for story time and sent them all up to bed.

  
  
  
"You shouldn't hate her so much, Shalimar," Emma said as they got ready for bed. Angelique had put them in the small double-roomed cabin she said she kept for weekends with 'her' kids. There was one room of eight bunks for the boys, one for the girls. Shalimar had decided she wanted the top bunk, and the empath was too tired to argue with her. "You'd do the same thing if you were in her place, I'd bet."

"No I wouldn't," Shalimar said decisively. "I wouldn't be talking about a man like Eckhart like he was some kind of… I don't know. Misguided wandering child."

"She's not talking about him like that," Emma corrected patiently. "She's just saying that he had some decent personality traits, and for some reason he chose to be cruel instead. I don't think she wants to help him any more than Adam does. She still likes him, but she knows exactly what kind of a person he is."

"Then how can she like him?" Shalimar flopped her head and shoulders over the top bunk and looked down at her teammate, who was climbing under the covers. "How can she like a man like that? He's… evil."

"To us, sure. But she knew him back before he was completely mean and sadistic. And I guess she saw something in him that isn't there anymore. And she's like you, she sticks with liking her friends, even when they do hideous, horrible things. That's why it's almost worse for her, and for Adam."

"What are you talking about…" Shalimar growled. "I'm not like her."

Emma hid a grin in the shadows under the bunk. "You both stick by your friends. You're both stubborn in your opinions. That's probably why you don't like her. I don't think she likes you much either."

"Wha…"

"Go to sleep, Shalimar. And think about it. She's got some good points. And I bet Adam would agree," Emma stuck her head under the pillow. Shalimar watched her for a little while before pulling back and flopping down on her own bed.

"No he wouldn't," she muttered. "Adam would never agree with that."

"Go to sleep, Shalimar."


	7. Out to Pasture

**All The Queen's Horses: Out to Pasture   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Author's Note: I don't own Mutant X, any of that. I own Angelique and all her horses. Thanks to Sllea and Kristen, glad you enjoyed it! I love that sort of ambiguous morality dilemma and character development and history, and I'm really depressed that Mutant X doesn't do more of it. Oh well, that means I can do it instead! Thanks also for the kind compliments about Shalimar; always glad to know I can stay in character. :) More coming up! Many thanks to Sllea for asking questions that lead to ideas.

When Emma got up at six the next morning out of sheer sleeplessness, Angelique was already up. Bleary-eyed, foul-mouthed, and walking around barely missing things, but she was up. The empath watched as the older woman poured herself a huge glass of orange juice, drank it down in two gulps, and grabbed what looked like a protein bar from a suspiciously large box. Emma made a face. How could she eat those?

Emma followed her out to the barns, where Angelique began loading hay into a wheelbarrow. Though she'd never really done it before, Emma stepped forward, grabbing a bale and setting it down where Angelique had done. The older woman raised an eyebrow.

"When I was your age, I never got up before noon if I didn't have to."

"And how often was that?" Emma retorted, thinking of the hours Adam kept. Angelique chuckled.

"Not very," she admitted, pulling down another bale. "There. That ought to be enough. Now some of this." She reached up and over, pulling down a bale of some other sort of plant. Emma thought it was alfalfa. 

"Couldn't you just as easily do this later in the day?" Emma asked finally, after the fourth or fifth yawn from Angelique.

"Force of habit," she replied wryly. "I did this for so long… Now I wake up at 5:30, 6:00 am whether I need to or not. It's actually kind of nice."

Emma snickered and shook her head, doubting that. She tossed over the hay and alfalfa into the food baskets as directed. It actually was relaxing, ambling through the corridor between stalls, even if the one horse did decide it liked her fingers better than the hay. She could see why Angelique preferred to spend time around them. Another horse, two stalls down from the first, tried for her fingers. It whinnied in protest as a fist descended rapidly on its nose.

"You have to react quickly," Angelique explained, "Because they don't have a very long short-term memory. If you wait long enough to go 'ow' and rub your hand, then that's long enough for them to forget what they did." Emma nodded, rubbing her hand unconsciously. "If they keep it up…" Angelique had been scratching the horse on the nose and it tried to bite her again. The first time she simply moved her hand away; the second time she swiftly grabbed the horse's nose and pinched it shut. "You know better, donkey," she told it. "You know better. Ah…" she said as the horse attempted to twitch its head away. "Keep that up and I'll send you off for glue, Storm Chaser."

They moved on. Storm Chaser, as though retorting, nickered as they passed.

"Storm Chaser?"

Angelique chuckled. "He's a sweet horse, but he has a tendency to go looking for trouble. Pushing the envelope. Chasing the thunderstorms."

"Oh." Emma paused, not sure how out of line it would be to say what she was thinking. "Why do you love him?" she blurted out finally. 

"Storm Chaser?" Angelique blinked. "Well…"

"Eckhart."

"Oh." Angelique sighed heavily. She moved across the gap between buildings, to her beloved black Friesians. She didn't say anything for a long time.

"When I was at GenomeX, it was primarily just the three of us. Yes, they had thousands of scientists on staff, but we were some of the few who stayed very long on our project. The only ones, in fact, who stayed as long as we did. Mason was intensely cynical, jaded, and bitter even then. Adam was as… hopeful… then as he is now, and I wasn't nearly as tired. He didn't understand, I think, our stubborn optimism. It flew in the face of everything he'd grown up with. The death of his brother, the suicide of his mother, an absentee father, ostracized for being highly intelligent and no good at anything physical. And then, he's never had any patience with average intelligence, which made him even more antisocial and sullen."

"At the same time, though, I think he wanted to be happy. We all had several traits in common… we were all highly intelligent, very driven, eerily creative. He wanted, I think, to be as optimistic as we were, but he couldn't manage it so he tried to be even more withdrawn. And we… well, I, at least… wouldn't let him. I tried to make friends. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was because I was as happy in relative solitude as he was that he tolerated my presence. After a while we just got used to each other. And… I think it was a novelty to him, someone who cared about who he was, what he thought… who didn't go away, and was always there."

It wasn't a direct answer, but Emma was already getting embarrassed with all the personal secrets spilling from the woman she barely knew. But she was still curious about one thing. Finally she worked up the courage to ask, "Did he know?"

Angelique sighed. "In retrospect… I don't know. I doubt it. At the time, of course, I thought he didn't know and didn't care. Which is, really, pretty unfair. He's not unperceptive, just uncaring. But no, I don't think he ever really guessed, not completely. I… was careful. If he had known, I think he would have … gone away."

Emma made a mental note not to ask any more personal questions of Angelique for a couple hours after she'd crawled out of bed and moved on to another topic. This one she was on more certain ground. "So, he had nothing to do with your…"

"Biokinesis?" Angelique smiled slightly. "No. That was my doing. Adam and Mason never knew. Two years after I'd arrived the persons in charge of the project approached me about doing some more intensive studies… I wanted to try it out on a known quantity first, and named myself. They were fairly shocked, and I told them that if they wanted my help they would have to play by my rules." Her smile turned grim. "After two years they didn't know me well enough to know what that meant, or that it was a singularly bad idea."

"So you specified the treatment to give you biokinetic abilities… so you could keep a closer watch on anything else they did?" Emma guessed, from what she knew of the woman.

"Something like that. Also for purely selfish reasons; it would make it a lot easier for me to do what I wanted to do with my horses. It's turned out to be more useful than I thought… once I achieved a certain measure of control."

Emma shivered. "Just how powerful are you?"

Angelique stopped at the last stall, her hand buried in Tiny Dancer's mane. "You know, I'm not entirely sure. I imagine that, if I were to put my mind to it, I could probably rebuild someone from the ground up." She looked over at the young mutant, who was staring in wide-eyed near-horror. "Oh, not that easily. I'd be nearly comatose for at least a week afterwards, and I'd be completely helpless while I did it. I can heal cuts, purge toxins, mend bones… slow down some debilitating diseases. It depends, mostly, on the scope of what I do. How much change is needed, and how deep it goes. Altering anything on a genetic level requires a lot of concentration."

"Oh…" Emma said faintly, her mind reeling with the potential of the woman standing in front of her. 

"How did Adam find out?" she asked then, and Emma blinked, caught by surprise. 

"The eye-in-the-sky traffic camera caught the accident with the semi… Jesse noticed you, enhanced the picture to see if you were okay… and caught you doing your… trick. I don't think anyone would notice if they weren't looking for something in particular," Emma hurried on to say at Angelique's worried look.

"That's something, anyway," the older woman sighed. "You know, for the amount of neglect or abuse the kids I deal with get from their parents, I bet they would be yanked out of this program so fast their heads would spin if anyone found out."

"Probably," Emma nodded slowly, thinking of all they'd encountered. Mutants who wanted so desperately to be human that they'd kill themselves for it. Humans who were terrified of mutants. Mutants who denied their abilities to the point where they suppressed them, until later on everything went to hell in a handbasket and their powers raged out of control. "Definitely," Emma said after a bit.

Angelique shook her head, moving Dancer's head away from her shoulder where he'd started pushing after she'd stopped scratching. "One of the many reasons I prefer horses to humans," she said wryly, and Emma chuckled slightly in response. "Well. That's neither here nor there, and the rest of your crew probably isn't going to be awake anytime soon…" She looked at the young mutant speculatively for a long while.

"What?" Emma asked finally.

"You ever been horseback riding?"

  
  
  
Emma was a lot easier in mind after the hour and a half spent riding with the older woman, talking and exchanging Adam stories and trying to teach the young mutant to ride. Angelique had give her over to the care of her older Friesian mare, Black Rose VI, whose great-great-many-times-great grand-dam had her name above the stable door. The mare was gentle, but big, and Emma was more sore than she'd ever thought she'd be after they finally came back to the stables. 

Shalimar was waiting for them, to both women's surprise. She had her arms folded across her chest and she looked very stern. The horses were pawing anxiously, but that could as well have been from her feral nature as from any sort of antagonistic feeling the young woman felt. 

Emma paused on her horse, frozen in mid-dismount. She looked over at Angelique.

"Go on," the older woman said, not taking her eyes off Shalimar. "I think we two have something to discuss." Shalimar nodded once, tightly, and Emma dismounted. Despite her creaky, stiff walk through the corridor and up to the house, no one laughed. No one was paying attention. Angelique dismounted more smoothly and took the reins of both horses. She stared at Shalimar expectantly for a bit and then, when the other didn't say anything, she led the horses forward and clipped the tie-lines to Dancer's bridle. 

"I don't like you," Shalimar blurted out abruptly, almost angrily. Angelique placidly led Black Rose to the next set of tie-lines and clipped her in. "I don't like how you think, I don't like who you hang out with, and I don't like the fact that we don't know you at all, and we're stuck in your house because somehow you convinced us to come along."

Angelique nodded. "Fair enough," was all she said. Shalimar looked slightly stung by that, but kept going.

"Emma says I should trust you. She says that you're just doing what I would do in your place, and that you have some good points. I don't trust you, but I trust her. And I trust Adam."

Hidden by the horse's flanks, Angelique paused in her currying and smiled slightly. "Adam is a good person to trust," she offered, neutrally. 

"Adam is a good man," Shalimar said forcefully, and Angelique wondered just what was behind the vehemence in her tone. "And if Adam says you're okay, and what you say bears thinking about, then I'll trust you." She didn't say what they both knew, that she was thinking about what Angelique had said already. And that, most likely, it was going to take her to some very uncomfortable thoughts. "But not before," Shalimar added finally.

Angelique stepped out from behind Black Rose and looked at Shalimar. Tension sizzled in two straight lines between their eyes, but it was an easier sort of tension than it had been. Dominant female sized up dominant female, each acknowledging the other as a worthy adversary or ally, and acknowledging the fact that the status could change at any given moment. Also understood was the fact that their circles of people to defend were largely the same, their causes parallel. Shalimar nodded, and Angelique nodded. 

"All right then," Angelique said cryptically, and went back to grooming her horses. Shalimar stood watching her for a long while, and then went back up to the house. 


	8. Refusing the Fences

**All The Queen's Horses: Refusing the Jump   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Mason Eckhart stared at the video that was playing quietly on his desk computer. He had been watching them for the past three days, off and on, when he could find a free moment. It looked like Angelique. It moved like Angelique. But cognitive dissonance was setting in, and he was starting to disbelieve that anything remotely like what he was seeing could exist. Tenderness. Kindness. Affection. These were not emotions shown to Mason Eckhart, ever. The universe didn't work that way.

Except that video evidence was showing him otherwise. He watched the tiny figure move around the tiny sleeping figure, with glances and touches he could never remember. Memories flooded back, things he hadn't thought about at the time and only vaguely recognized the meaning of now. It was all too much, even for him. Facts, data, analysis, numbers on a page he could comprehend, subjects in a lab. Emotions were completely alien to him.

"Sir…" 

"I'm busy," Eckhart responded automatically. 

"Sir, I really think you should see this."

"I said…" he frowned. "What?"

"I'm routing it through to your computer now, sir."

A window popped up on his computer. It looked like some sort of news footage. "I have it," he said, and would have signed off except for the interruption of the GSA agent. 

"Sir, this was acquired from the news agency two days ago. Mutant X is probably aware of this by now and taking whatever steps they think necessary."

"I am duly advised, Agent Starkweather." Eckhart's tone had a heavy dose of irony in it, enough to kill if dropped on the agent's head from a great height. The agent took the hint (if it could be called such) and signed off. 

Eckhart leaned forward, playing the footage the agent had acquired and trying not to think about the past. It turned out not to be that hard. He watched with feelings he couldn't name and didn't want to examine too closely as the semi crossed the median, nearly hitting the tiny black car, which went screaming down in the opposite direction barely in time. The footage then switched to a brief clip of a cop walking up to the car, clearly part of a broadcast and only a few seconds long. 

It was interrupted by the GenomeX logo, and the scrolling words 'Analysis in progress.' A few more seconds and the clip was back. It froze as the cop was two feet away from the rear bumper, zoomed in on the driver's side window, magnified and clarified the image. Angelique. Yes, of course it would be, it was her car. What was she doing… holding her hands up to her head. It looked reasonable; she'd sustained some sort of head injury in the accident. But what was happening wasn't. As he watched, the skin and tissue began to knit itself back together, the blood to clot and fall away faster than humanly possible. Under ordinary circumstances, anyway.

Eckhart's face and hands burned. Fingertips flew across the keyboard as he broke the GenomeX database wide open and brought up Dr. Breedlove's files. Why wasn't she on record? Why hadn't she been listed? How had she managed to hide all those years? When did this happen? He ignored the little voice in the back of his mind that was asking, plaintively, why hadn't she told him.

"Sir! Security breach…" an agent burst in, and Eckhart looked up with the icy stare of someone who didn't care whether you lived or died, except that you had interrupted him in a vital task. "Uh. Sorry, sir. I'll… uh… tell the computer security people to stand down."

Eckhart didn't even bother to dismiss the man, and returned to assaulting the files like a mad thing, trying to find some evidence that she was listed somewhere. Finally, back in the genetic records from twenty years ago, he found it.

"DNA sample taken from Angelique Marie Delacroix, post-treatment. Subject shows signs of an extremely accelerated recovery…" Eckhart devoured all text on the screen, went back for more. They'd gone behind his and Adam's back on this one, most likely because they thought a nineteen year old girl would be more susceptible to their ideas than either of the two men. They'd struck a deal with her, a live test subject with all her research skills for a tailored mutation of her choice. He couldn't really fault her for what she'd chosen, either. He'd've done the same thing in her place.

And apparently it worked astonishingly well. If there had been any fatal side effects she'd conquered them all with her biokinetic ability. Her medical record for the present day was spotless; in fact, her doctors were amazed at her youthfulness. She was a flawless specimen of a human being: intelligent, physically perfect, resourceful… 

Jealousy colored his vision red and made him blind, made his head swim. He wasn't shaking, he was sitting very still in fact, but he was entirely overcome by an unthinking rage at the young woman who he felt had betrayed him by having everything he didn't. The perfect life, all of her skills, the ability to carry them out in a manner more efficient and graceful than he ever had or ever would. No debilitating, crippling conditions. And what was left for him? Nothing, except an emotionless invitation to a public event and a harsh dismissal halfway through. No further contact, no further information, and she didn't want anything to do with him. He could still hear her voice, now, telling him to leave. He could still feel the tingling of his arm where her hand had touched it, only now he supposed he knew what it had been. Her biokinetic powers had touched him briefly, though most likely without effect. 

And then, the rage was gone as quickly as it had began, leaving him tired, weak, and drained. Thinking of that moment had brought to mind a host of other moments, and even being as cold as he was (or tried to be) he couldn't maintain the heat of anger against her. He had one, maybe two memories of betrayal, and a whole host of others of support. Quiet support, much needed, the kind he'd never had from anyone before. It was… an odd feeling. 

He still didn't know what to do. Ordinarily he would have already called in the GSA and had her brought in by now. On the other hand, he wasn't sure even the GSA could handle her, not when she could give them an aneurysm with a thought and a glare. And somehow… he felt he owed her the privacy she'd earned, the peace and quiet and retirement. He didn't want to hurt her, Eckhart realized abruptly, scowling at himself for what he saw as weakness. But it was there, all the same. He spent a few minutes, convinced himself that it was because she might hold the key to regaining his life and liberty, getting back some semblance of normality. She might be the cure. That was why he wanted her unharmed and safe. 

Eckhart pushed the button for the intercom. "Starkweather. Assemble a team, pick up Delacroix. But keep it quiet, I want her brought in with maximum security, maximum secrecy. No one outside of your team is to know, not even the rest of the GSA."

"Sir?" Starkweather sounded nervous. As well he might, but that wasn't Eckhart's problem. 

"Do it. Contact me when you have her in custody." He paused. "Bring her in unharmed." He switched the intercom off and leaned back in his chair. She wouldn't be hurt. Starkweather knew his employer too well to risk damaging her. She would be fine. And he could convince her of what needed to happen. She would help him. She'd always helped him. 

_Ma belle dame sans merci. Ma petite cherie, ma chere._ He closed his eyes and remembered. _Mon pauvre ami. Mon cheri, mon cher. N'importe quoi, mon cher. Mangé, un petit peu? Pour moi, cher? Et, dorme un petit peu, aussi. Pour moi. C'est quatre heur de matin, mon cher. Oui, cherie, mais un moment plus… je crois que, si je fait comme aussi… Et voila, bravo, tu as fait un grand dégat. Allez, cher, a ton chambre. Tu as trop sommeil pour …_

He couldn't remember anymore. He wondered why it bothered him so.


	9. Flying Lead Change

**All The Queen's Horses: Flying Lead Change   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Author's Note: It's a bit premature, but I'm considering two sequels (at least) for this story... one involving an amnesiac Eckhart as a way of sort of exploring what might have been, and one involving something that forces Angelique to use her biokinetic powers to send Eckhart's condition into remission for a time, but at the cost of her life. I'm not sure which one I'll write, I may write both, or neither or some combination of the two, or something completely different. Feedback is appreciated. It's almost over! Thank you all for reading and reviewing. :)

Adam looked around as he entered the foyer of the huge house. He still had trouble believing that one woman, especially Angelique, lived here all alone. It was a huge place with eight bedrooms and far more auxiliary areas than he could ever remember seeing in a house. Some of the rooms looked like the type Victorian or roaring 20s era women wound entertain guests in, with huge windows and a screen door that led out onto the porch. Others were small, cozy, especially the television room. The library had bookshelves that reached ten feet to the ceiling and a huge window with a ledge that was clearly intended for lounging on. It was elegant, huge and cozy at the same time, and somehow utterly Angelique. 

"Hello?" Adam called into the echoing emptiness of the house. When she'd phoned him yesterday she'd said they would be here, but she'd neglected to mention that 'here' could be anywhere on the 65 acre property. He wandered through the dining area and kitchen again, wondering where everyone was.

Shalimar was standing in the TV room when he passed the open door, looking tense. He would have sworn she hadn't been there the last time he walked by, but that wasn't unusual for the feral. He went over to her, concerned. "What's wrong?"

Shalimar looked at Adam measuringly, as if she wasn't sure to speak to him about what was on her mind or not. After a short while she asked him something that rocked him back on his heels. "Why is Angelique in love with Eckhart?"

"Guh…" Adam replied eloquently. His brain stalled out, then slowly shifted back up into first gear. "What makes you think she is?"

Shalimar gave Adam a 'don't be dense' look. "She talks about him… not like an old friend, but like someone special. She keeps more keepsakes from him than from anyone else, things you wouldn't normally keep unless it was someone close to you. I think she idolizes him, or something. It's not healthy; she doesn't think he … I don't know. She thinks he can do no wrong."

Adam frowned. "That doesn't sound like the Angelique I knew even fourteen years ago. What makes you say that?"

Shalimar recounted to him the conversations they'd had the past night. Adam leaned against the wall halfway through, trying to sift out what was Shalimar's bias from what appeared to be an instant dislike of the woman and what had actually been said. From what she was saying it sounded like Angelique was discussing some heavy topics with them… but things Adam himself should have brought up long before, and hadn't had time or concentration enough to. He sighed. She was right, he was going about this somewhat rashly. But it was so hard to concentrate on philosophical issues when you were keeping a motley lot of young men and women from being destroyed by a world that feared their existence.

"She does have a point, Shalimar," Adam said finally, after a long silence. "I haven't been as forthcoming with you as I should have. Frankly, we haven't had time to breathe, much less talk. But she is right, and I'm glad she spoke with all of you about what and when she did."

Shalimar frowned. "But… aren't her feelings…"

Adam laughed, not unkindly. "Shalimar, if you'd been there fourteen years ago…" he shook his head slowly, "She never let her feelings for him… or anyone… cloud her judgment when it came to serious matters. In fact, that's why she left GenomeX."

Shalimar blinked. "Because of Eckhart?"

"Partially," Adam nodded. He leaned back a bit more, trying to remember what happened and thinking of how to explain it to Shalimar. The more he thought back on it, the more he saw clues, hints of what he hadn't seen before. "As the … well. As the mutant project became more and more advanced, we all grew more apart. Eckhart and I, especially, began the fight we've been continuing today. She thought we were both being childish and stupid," he chuckled softly at a memory. "Sometimes she was right. At any rate… the last day she was there, she tried to talk to me. I was too busy… I should have listened to her, I think. Or at least, tried to talk her out of what she was going to do next." He sighed heavily.

"What did she do?" Shalimar blinked, caught up in the story.

"She went and talked to Eckhart. I don't know what they talked about, but I remember they must have talked for nearly an hour and a half. The next day, she was gone. Her locker was cleaned out, her car wasn't there. They said she'd transferred. Later they said she'd left. We never found out where she went."

Shalimar blinked. "So she and Eckhart weren't lovers."

Adam shook his head slowly. "Not that I ever heard. I don't think it even entered his mind as a possibility. He just… wasn't the sort of man to think like that about her," he finished lamely, not sure he could say what he meant.

Shalimar nodded slowly, looking thoughtful and troubled. "I guess that's what Emma meant," she said, as though finally realizing something. Adam looked at her curiously, but she shrugged it off. "Let's go get the others."

Adam nodded, figuring she'd tell him if or when she was good and ready. "Where are they?"

"Down with the horses," Shalimar grinned, and it was positively gleeful. "Angelique's teaching Brennan and Jesse how to ride."

  
  
  
"Heels _down!_ Back straight!" Angelique called. She sounded like she was trying not to laugh, and as Adam rounded the corner he could see why. Jesse looked about as comfortable as a sack of potatoes on the back of the horse he was riding. Angelique herself was on a big black horse in the middle of the ring; it looked like one of the horses she'd been riding in the show. 

Brennan and Emma were also on horseback, in the ring next to the one Angelique and Jesse were in. Brennan was on a red-brown horse (which Adam vaguely remembered was something called a 'blood bay'), but Emma was on one of Angelique's favored blacks. Emma also looked significantly more comfortable than Brennan did, which made Adam chuckle softly. 

"See?" he heard her say as Brennan's horse began to bounce it's head jerkily, making Brennan even more nervous. "That's why you leave the reins a little bit loose."

"Easy for you to say," Brennan muttered. 

Adam chuckled again, moving towards the center of the ring. Angelique glanced over at him, glanced over at the pair in the other ring, then back at Adam and winked at him. Adam nodded, grinning. 

"Uh… help?" Jesse said, sounding slightly panicked. Adam fought down the urge to laugh. Jesse's horse wasn't actually doing anything but ambling over to the hay-pile, but Jesse looked very disturbed by the fact that the horse was doing something without his permission and with him on its back. Angelique shook her head, grinning, and rode over to take the reins. 

"Be nice," she murmured to the horse, who nickered in response. She glanced over at Jesse. "Feel up to more or…" 

Jesse dismounted quickly, starting to get off towards the right and then sliding off on the left side of the horse at a look from Angelique. "Noooo," he said quickly. "No thanks, honestly, ma'am…" He backed away from the horse. "That's more than enough for me for one day." 

Angelique chuckled, leading the horse over to the side of the ring and dismounting, herself. "Hey there, Adam," she greeted him with a one-armed horse-smelling hug and a kiss on the cheek. Adam blinked for a second, startled, and found himself blushing. And then he could hear the snickers from all five of them, and shook it off.

"You seem to have done well for yourself," he said, watching as Emma and Brennan rode up behind him. Shalimar exchanged some sort of complicated look with Emma and Angelique that he only barely caught, which caused all three of them to burst into giggles. Adam, Brennan, and Jesse exchanged a confused look, feeling abruptly out of the loop.

"Well, breeding horses pays well if you can pull it off. I got lucky," she smiled. "And I had the advantage of starting back when I had a day job." She scritched her horse's nose and then gently shoved it off her shoulder. "You seem to be doing pretty well for yourself too."

He shrugged slightly, not sure how much he could get away with saying. Around them the other four were making their way up to the barn. "We get by. Some days are better than others."

Angelique nodded slowly, leading both horses up to the barn after the others. "You can always call, you know, if you need a safe haven. Or just someone to talk to. Any of you. As long as you all keep in mind that the farm is neutral territory, no grudges go in and none come out…"

"Like Switzerland," Adam smiled, remembering a past conversation. 

Angelique chuckled. "Yeah. Like Switzerland."

They stood there for a little while, watching each other, smiling and remembering past and happier days. The horses tugged their heads down to crop grass, and Angelique let them. Fingertips brushed the side of her face hesitantly, and she looked up just in time for Adam's lips to brush softly against hers. And then she looked away, stepping back. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them needed to; they knew each other well enough to understand.

"Don't bother," Angelique called up to Emma as they neared the barn and she could see Emma fumbling with the bridle and tie-lines. "I'll get them. You go on and get back home. I'm sure at least some of you are dying to get into something that doesn't smell like horse sweat," she grinned, and Jesse grinned back sheepishly. Angelique laughed softly and led her horses around to the second barn. 

"Hey, um…" Emma spoke up hesitantly as the Mutant X'ers started heading down to the driveway. "Would it be all right if I came around… every once in a while? I… umm…" she looked down shyly, and Angelique had the feeling she knew what was coming.

"You caught the horse bug and now you want riding lessons," she chuckled. "Sure. Come by tomorrow, if you want, I don't have the kids up here then so it should be a quiet day."

Emma grinned, and Angelique grinned back. "Okay… yeah! I'll be around. But not at 6 in the morning." They laughed.

"See you tomorrow," Angelique waved as Emma started back down to the road, and waited till the girl was out of sight before turning the blacks loose in the paddock near the barn. It was good to see Adam again, even with the trouble between him and Mason. And it was good to see that he'd done well for himself, up to and including some very bright protégés. 

The whickering and sudden agitation of the horses was her only warning. The dart hit her in the shoulder, and then another in the thigh, then third and a fourth. The tranquilizers overwhelmed her system; she tried to fight them, and failed. As her face descended towards the soft, packed dirt floor of the barn, she wondered why Mason was doing this. And then she wondered if she was going to wake up again. And then she was unconscious.

  
  
  
Mason stared at the team of four he had sent to apprehend the woman. "I told you to bring her unharmed," he said in deceptively mild tones. "I suppose you didn't think one dosage was enough?"

Agent Starkweather looked nervous. "Sir, you told us she was a biokinetic, and a very skilled one… we thought it was better to overwhelm her before…"

"But not with a faster-acting drug. You chose quantity over quality." His voice was soft. Eckhart was never more dangerous than when he was speaking softly and calmly. 

"Sir, I…" Starkweather swallowed. Special powers or no, he wasn't going to live through this one. A beeping from the computer in front of Eckhart gave the distraught agent a few minutes' reprieve. All four agents slumped in silent relief as Eckhart's stance relaxed ever so slightly. Whatever was on that computer had saved their lives.

"You are lucky, Agent Starkweather," he said in that same mild, quiet tone. "She's doing quite well, and has suffered no ill effects from your… over-enthusiasm."

"Sir," Starkweather drew himself up. No need to cringe if he wasn't about to be put into stasis, after all. He might even get a promotion out of this, eventually, or at least a certain amount of preferential treatment. And, reported to the right authorities, maybe it would even get Eckhart in trouble. Though he'd save that for a dire day; he wasn't dumb enough to try and blackmail Eckhart. "Thank you, sir." 

"You can go," Eckhart said, sitting back down and promptly starting to ignore them all. "Tell no one about this."

"Yes, sir," Starkweather and his team turned and left the room. Eckhart didn't even notice; his attention was already on the detailed medical reports coming in from the doctor he had sworn to secrecy and assigned to her case. He would keep her from the official channels of the GSA for as long as he could, ensuring her safety and that she was treated with the utmost care. As precious as she was, he wasn't going to risk losing her again. Not to Adam, not to the GSA, not to anybody. 

He would put her into stasis himself; he would make sure nothing happened to her. And then, when everything was going smoothly again and the last of the Mutant X group had been dealt with, he could bring her out and bring her back to the fold. With her at GenomeX again, everything would start to go right again. It would finally be as it all had been before. He smiled slightly, closed his eyes, and indulged himself in a little daydream of what it would be like to have her back again.


	10. Rode Hard...

**All The Queen's Horses: Rode Hard...   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Author's Note: Eckhart, Emma, etc are Not mine. Angelique mine. For me, not for you. Two chapters left! Still trying to figure out what to do about the sequel and whether or not to kill Angelique off. 

Angelique woke up strapped to a bed. And not in the good way, either, she thought ruefully to herself. She didn't look around and try to figure out where she was; she knew where she was. She knew who had put her there, even if he hadn't fired the tranquilizers, and she had a fair idea of what was going on. An IV pumped fluids and nutrients into her, electrodes were stuck to her body, and monitors beeped quietly nearby. Her restraints were plastic and steel; nothing organic was in the room for her to work with, and the materials that were there were so difficult as to be impossible in the time allotted. There was a form in a chair just barely out of her vision, in the shadows at the other end of the room. She knew who that was, too.

"Mason," she said softly.

He didn't seem to hear. He didn't seem to notice that she was awake, although she could tell by the bio-rhythms her powers allowed her to see that he was. She tried to sit up a little, and found she couldn't even do that. Her movement, though, attracted his attention. He came forward. 

"You know, if you wanted to play kinky sex games, all you had to do was ask." Sarcasm and hurt laced deeply through her voice. As Mason came into the light she saw him flinch. He looked paler than he had since the last time she'd seen him, and his eyes looked more sunken. She frowned. "Go to bed, man. You look like the walking dead."

He smiled slightly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Still mothering. Even when you're a prisoner in the institute you used to work for. Some things never change, do they."

"I was hoping," she said dryly, looking pointedly at her bonds and then at him. "Prisoner?"

He didn't answer. He looked away, even, if only for a brief second. Then he looked back at her, and there was a sick sort of desperation in his eyes that made her wonder just what had changed him. Had he changed? Had she just not seen it when she had seen him so long ago? "You're not going to leave this facility, Angelique. I'm sorry."

"Sorry. You don't look sorry. You look like the pampered albino Persian cat that ate the canary. That doesn't look like sorry, that looks like …" she paused. "That looks like the expression of a little boy who's finally gotten the bike he wanted that his so-called friend didn't, and now he's going to sit and gloat over it." She was surprised at the bitterness in her voice, and then she was surprised at her surprise. "Keep your sorry."

Mason looked slightly shocked. Perhaps he, too, was surprised at her bitterness. "Angelique, you can't think that I…"

"Oh, _please_," she rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that line of limp-wristed plausible-deniability crap."

"…meant for this to happen," he finished. 

"Yes you did," she said quietly.

The air burned between their gazes for a long while. Emotions too raw for her to comprehend without feeling embarrassed flickered through his eyes like data scrolling through a small window. Fear; anger; desire of a sort so acute, not physical, purely emotional. She was mildly flattered that he still felt secure enough with her to be so open, but then it wasn't as though she was going to be allowed to tell anyone about his moment of vulnerability. She, herself, was oddly calm, as though something in her was telling her that he hadn't changed as much as she was seeing. 

"I missed you," she said abruptly, having the sudden feeling that openness should be met with openness. "I thought for a long time about coming back to see you."

Mason blinked, as though such a thought was incomprehensible to him. Perhaps it was. "Why?"

"I don't know," she shrugged as best she could. "I made lots of excuses to myself, but that's all they were. Sometimes I looked you up, saw what you were doing, and thought about stopping by, or phoning. Something. I guess I just told myself after a while that you…" she paused, thought, and then said it anyway. "I guess I eventually figured out that you just didn't care."

If it affected him at all, Mason gave no sign. He leaned back in the chair, almost pensive. "You should have told me," he said after a bit.

"About…?"

"The experiment. The…" he gestured at her, and suddenly Angelique knew what he meant.

"I should have. Now I'm rather glad I didn't," she stared evenly at him. "Would you have done anything but lock me up if I had told you? These," she rattled her restraints, "Don't exactly inspire trust, Mason. I thought you were better than this."

Now Mason did grimace, out of anger or out of guilt. "You wouldn't come to us voluntarily," he turned back on her, "Instead you chose…"

"Chose _what?_" she cried. "Chose to live on a farm in the back woods with my horses and my kids and keep to myself? Exactly what is there about my lifestyle that is illegal or illicit, _Mr. Eckhart?_" It was the first time she had addressed him so formally, and he flinched from that, too. 

"You might have used your powers to influence someone. A person with abilities as powerful and as well-designed as yours," It was a backhanded compliment, in a way, "might have set herself up as some sort of messiah. A great and magical healer…"

"Right. I could have set myself up as the Wizard of bloody Oz. I thought you knew me better than that." She knew him better than to think he actually believed what he was saying, though.

"You didn't trust me," he said, and that did hurt. She looked down.

"I was scared. You and Adam… when the project was completed and we finally knew it worked, you two were already coming to blows. Over the projects, over… over everything. I didn't want to be fought over any more than I already was. So I didn't tell either of you, because I didn't want to give either of you another reason to be fighting." 

Mason looked down. They shared a brief moment of alikeness, of understanding. Neither of them wanted to be around when people they cared about fought violently, tooth and claw. And they both remembered it from childhood. "I see," was all he said.

Angelique sighed deeply. Suddenly she was too tired to care if she lived or died, and too saddened by Mason's betrayal. "I should just give you syphilis and take my chances with your GSAgents," she said wryly with some last vestiges of humor. Mason stared at her with an extremely startled expression. "Kidding. Mostly. Oh, what the hell, go on, Mason. Kill me, drug me, do whatever the hell you want to me. I'm too tired to care anymore." She turned her head away and closed her eyes, not wanting to see any more. 

Mason tucked a blanket around her, for all the world like a parent with a child (or, her mind told her cruelly, like she had done to him all the times he'd fallen asleep at his desk or in the staff rooms). She feigned sleepiness, not opening her eyes. She didn't know what his expression would be and she didn't want to know. There were too many mistakes, hurt feelings, bad judgment calls, obsessions, and broken dreams between the two (three) of them for her to want to see any more. He turned the light off. She could tell by the lack of artificial brightness against her eyes. The door closed with a faint click behind him. Now she could allow the tears to fall.

  
  
  
Emma was practically skipping on her way to the stables the next day. Adam had given her use of one of the SUVs, designating it for 'horse trips.' So they wouldn't make all the other vehicles smell like horse-sweat and saddle-soap, he said with a smile. Emma was practically grinning. For once, everything was going pretty well for a change. She had found a new friend to whom she could tell the whole story, and who wasn't a GSA agent in disguise, a member of a mercenary band, a crazy scientist with a super-powerful drug or virus or whatever, or anything else detrimental to the well-being of Mutant X. 

Hell. No one was around to see. Emma grinned gleefully and started skipping up the path towards the house. Life was going so well. A new friend, and Brennan didn't seem to mind her putting the moves on him. She grinned even more broadly as her heart and her libido gave a little pitter-pat. That was another thing that was going to be nice about having Angelique around. Shalimar was good company, but they both needed an older woman they could go talk to about things. Talking to Adam about dating techniques just… didn't feel right.

Neither did the look of the wide-eyed horse that ran past her and froze her in her tracks in the middle of the road. Emma watched Big Red run past as though wolves were after him, the same saddle on that Jesse had had the other day. Angelique wouldn't have had Red running around saddled, much less free range. Maybe someone had fallen off or… Emma started running. No one had fallen off that horse. Something had happened. 

Her suspicions were confirmed with the racket that met her ears and eyes when she got up to the two stables. The farther barn, with the unregistered horses, was making much more noise than the one with the blacks. Tiny Dancer and Sister Moon were standing at the edge of the barn, as though waiting for someone. Big Red she had just seen and the other horse they had had out yesterday, Samwise, were gone. 

Emma looked around. Dancer and Moon walked calmly up to her and began nosing her shoulder, as though they knew something bad had happened and wanted her to do something about it. Emma patted their necks absently. She didn't know what to do, but she knew who would. 

"Adam," she said finally, activating her commlink.

"Emma?" Adam sounded surprised, as well he might. "What's wrong? I thought you were supposed to be riding?"

"Supposed to be being the operative words," she said wryly. "Angelique's gone. The horses we had yesterday are loose, and it doesn't look like she went of her own free will. Stop it, Dancer," she absently shoved the horse's nose away from her shoulder. "I don't know what happened, but I can make some very good guesses."

"Eckhart," Adam said in affirmation, and he sounded pissed. "Damn that man. I didn't think…" Emma heard him sigh, and wondered what he was thinking. Although she had a pretty good idea of what it was Adam hadn't thought of, given the conversations with Angelique the other day and the ones with Adam the day before that. "We'll be out there soon. Take a look around, see if you can figure out anything."

"Okay," she said, staring oddly at Moon who had begun pawing at the dirt in front of a stall. Adam signed off, and Emma went over to where Moon was standing and knelt down. "What's up, girl?" she asked, rubbing a foreleg the way she'd seen Angelique do. And then she saw it, a glint of metal and plastic against the packed-dirt stable floor. 

Emma picked up the dart and turned it over in her hands. The feathering had come off, but it looked like the kind of tranquilizer darts people used on large animals. She had no idea what the normal dosage was for one of those things, and she wondered how much it would take to kill a human. Eckhart couldn't be that cruel… could he?

Emma sighed, leaving it where it was for now and standing up. "Well, I guess we'd better get you guys back into your stalls," she said, taking hold of Moon's bridle and tugging her towards her empty stall. She had no idea what to do with the saddle, but Angelique probably had lists of emergency phone numbers in the house. She could call someone and tell him or her to come look after the horses. With Moon safely locked away in her stall, she went over to Dancer. Dancer shied, and backed away.

"Hey, you," she said, frowning. "You know me. What's up? C'mon, time to go back…" she trailed off as Dancer wheeled and galloped away. Emma shook her head, knowing better than to try and follow. "Crazy horse."

Adam, Brennan, and Shalimar came up the road at that point. Emma ran down to meet them. Adam and Shalimar looked pissed, Brennan, worried. "Show me," was all Adam said. 

Emma led him up to where she'd found the tranq dart. "That bastard!" Shalimar said vehemently. "How can he do this to her?" Emma tried not to laugh at how her friend had changed her mind about Angelique so easily. 

"He's a psycho," Brennan said firmly. "Who knows what he's thinking?"

"He's not a psycho," Emma said, unconsciously echoing her new mentor, "He's obsessive and intelligent and … those are two really bad things," she trailed off. Pounding hoof-beats made her look up.

"Speaking of intelligent," Adam smiled slightly. Dancer was somehow managing to herd the other two panicked horses up to the barn. Emma blinked, and Shalimar and Brennan gaped. "I guess she was more successful with the experiment than any of us thought," he continued as the black horse stopped the other two in front of the four humans with well placed bites and kicks. 

"Uh…" Emma said, "I guess we'd better…" she started to lead the horses into the stalls. Then, glancing back at Dancer, she had an idea. "Dancer?" she asked gently, pulling the horse to where she had last seen Angelique with him. "Dancer, baby… what happened?" She made as if to clip the tie lines to Dancer's bridle, and then started pretending to comb the horse. "What happened? What happened to Angelique?" 

The horse's ears pricked up at her name, as though it understood. "What happened?" Emma kept asking. The other three stared at her as though she was crazy. Emma sighed and dropped her hands, wondering if this was going to work. She shooed Brennan, Adam, and Shalimar back a little ways and tried again, miming the clipping of the tie lines and then brushing the horse. "What happened, Dancer?"

And then suddenly she was being shouldered out of the way by the huge black horse. Dancer nuzzled… something in the air where he had been, and then suddenly reared up with an equine scream that sent all the other horses into a panic. And then he fell backwards and lay as if dead.

"What the hell was that?" Brennan asked, unnerved and sounding panicked. Not that Emma could blame him; that had been possibly the most disturbing noise she'd ever heard from anything on four legs. The horse was still lying there. Emma started to kneel and check if he was all right… and then Dancer opened his eyes and rolled to his feet, looking almost pleased with himself. 

"That…" Adam swallowed. "Was a very intelligent horse." He walked up and rubbed Dancer's neck, and the horse started pushing him backwards. "Wha…"

"Go with it," Emma said suddenly, her eyes lighting up. "I think I know…"

Dancer pushed him back to the edge of the barn, and then a few feet beyond. Then he started pushing Brennan. And then, when he'd gotten the young man where he wanted him, he started pushing Shalimar.

"Whoa, there, horsie," she said, looking at the horse as though she wasn't sure whether to hurt it or avoid it. It looked back at her, slightly afraid of her but stubborn in its wishes. 

"Go with it," Emma repeated, and Shalimar did. When the horse had her in place it stopped, and looked at them all as if to say 'Well? I did my part.' 

"Three…" Adam said, staring at the horse as though it was a minor miracle. "Three people. Shot her with tranquilizers and carried her off…"

"To the GSA," Emma nodded. "Three people and a getaway man sounds like a GSA team. But why? I thought he cared about her…" Adam stared at the ground, dismayed. "He probably found out she was a mutant, somehow. I don't know if that … I don't know what that would do to him, but…" He shook his head, "Either way, we've got to get her out of there. GenomeX is bad enough for most mutants, for her there's no real telling what Eckhart would do. He could get very nasty."


	11. ...And Put Away Wet

**All The Queen's Horses: ...And Put Away Wet   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Author's Note: Almost almost done! One more chapter! And then, depending on how many reviews I get, I may or may not write a sequel. I have no plans for it as yet anyway, except a bunch of story ideas I want to put into a coherent storyline. Including elements such as Eckhart's kids, Eckhart's ex-wife, Angelique sending Eckhart into remission for various periods of time ending in various degrees of lethality for her, Eckhart losing his memory, Adam going AWOL, various other such things. Anyway.. thank you all for reading! Thank you so much, Sllea, for reviewing, you made it so worth while! Hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did. :)

Angelique Marie Delacroix. The Angel Mary of the Cross. Ironic, Eckhart thought with a smile. Ironic and yet somehow fitting, considering her personality and the intrinsic need to mother and care for everyone that he'd seen in the years he'd known her. And now he was being put into the position of caring for her, which was the ultimate irony of all. He, who had never had a single being solely dependent on him. Which was perhaps a good thing, but there it was.

The stasis pod was prepared, and so was she. The drugs in her system kept her sedated and in a regulated coma, perfectly preserved until such time as he could revive her and put her to work for GenomeX. She should have come back to work of her own volition, but he had known (had been too afraid) that would never happen, and so took the alternate (crueler) route instead. So now she was frozen in time, his very own Sleeping Beauty. He chuckled mirthlessly. Somehow he didn't think he was anyone's idea of a Prince Charming. She was laid out on the pallet, which had only to be slid in and locked into the stasis pod, but he wanted a few last moments with her before locking her away for what might be a very long time.

Black, slightly wavy hair was bound neatly in a braid behind her. He resisted the urge to undo it, to lay it over her shoulders in a messy waterfall as it always fell when she slept. He knew that if he did, the lights would glint blue highlights off of her hair, and make it seem to shine if she moved. Her eyes were closed, but he knew that if they opened they would be a warm, welcoming deep brown, so dark as to almost be black. Her skin, less pale than it had been in the years when she spent all of her life indoors, was now a light gold from all the time spent outdoors working with recalcitrant horses and humans. He brushed her shoulder where the simple stasis uniform left it bare. Her skin was soft, he could feel it even through the gloves. Full, blushing pink lips on a smiling mouth. He wondered what it would be like to kiss that mouth. He wondered if he had ever had the chance.

She really was beautiful. She must have been stunning when she was seventeen, twenty, back when she had first come to work for GenomeX. Yet somehow he hadn't noticed. The wisdom of hindsight, he supposed. And amazingly tolerant, for someone who espoused views so similar to his and was at least as much of a loner. Perhaps that was why he'd first tolerated her; she hadn't insisted on socializing him and making him a part of the social group. Instead, somehow recognizing that he absolutely hated that unless it was necessary to achieve a goal, she had simply spent time around him instead. Quiet time: she would work on whatever it was she was working on, legal pad in hand, doing equations, and leave him to work on whatever it was he was working on. Occasionally she would disappear, and when she returned she would have two Styrofoam trays of food, and put one firmly on his desk. 

Eckhart chuckled softly. That had been the one point she had always insisted upon: eating at least once a day and sleeping for at least six hours. He remembered her tucking a blanket around him when he had fallen asleep at his desk one late night (the care he'd never known). 

He took her hand in both of his, careful of the IV. It was limp, as though she weren't simply asleep but entirely gone. The thought made him frown, and he had to check the monitors to make sure she hadn't … left (died. Just say it for what it is, died) while he wasn't looking.

"Why did you do it?" he found himself asking quietly of the unconscious woman, thoughts becoming words before he realized he was voicing them. It was the first time in the last few days to sit and think calmly about everything that had happened. "Why did you leave? You could have done everything you wanted to at the Institution. We needed you there, Adam and I. You kept us going, kept us sane. Wendy and the Lost Boys," he chuckled softly. "You took care of us so well."

"And you seemed to be so happy here," he mused. The walls of the stasis room seemed to disappear, as he traveled back twenty years and a few miles to the old complex where they had all worked. "At least, you never objected to working here. You were so intense and passionate about everything. You thought the world was a marvelous place. For a little while, I thought that you might be right… you know, no one else has been able to do that. I had never seen any evidence to contradict my opinion that the world was a harsh and unforgiving place… I suppose I never wanted to. And yet…"

He looked down at her. "Why do you always have to be so goddamn cheerful?" he asked, more wry than angry. "Why did you have to work at GenomeX? You took everything I took for granted and threw it all out the window, and then I had to go and find new ideas to put in their place." He squeezed her hand gently, reassuringly, as though that made a difference. "Well, it wasn't your fault. But life would have been so much simpler."

She looked so still, lying there. It felt wrong; Angelique had never been completely still when she slept, never so rigid and straight. The few times he had caught her asleep at her desk she had always been sprawled out over something, working, and her hair would always fall over her face, moving ever so slightly in the soft puffs of air of her breathing. There was none of that here, not even the rise and fall of her chest or a fluttering of her eyelids. She was still as a corpse, and he had to check the monitors again to make sure she was still alive. 

"This really is the ultimate irony," Eckhart murmured, slowly coming to realize what he now felt he should have known days ago. "Here you are, exactly where I thought I should want you… and now here I am waiting for you to sit up and argue with me. Or tell me I'm not sleeping enough, again." He rubbed his eyes carefully. "Perhaps you're right about that."

"Damn you, argue with me," he snapped, suddenly angry at himself and afraid he'd fulfilled his own prophecy. "Tell me I'm being an idiot. Tell me Adam's right. God knows, you've said it enough before." He stroked her face before he thought about it. "I even miss hearing you say 'I told you so'" he murmured, smiling slightly. He could almost hear her saying it, as he finally consciously reached the decision he had made the moment he'd seen her lying there. He watched her for a few moments longer. It seemed almost as though she'd grown even more still, more unmoving in the last five minutes. He looked at the monitors… was it his imagination or were her life signs growing that much fainter? Never mind.

Eckhart reached over and turned the dials on the temperature pad up, raising her body temperature to a normal human 98 degrees. He disconnected the tubes which kept the stasis fluids and drugs running through her veins and waited a few minutes, preparing syringes. The seconds ticked by as he watched her not breathe and then finally it was time, and he slowly injected the contents of the first syringe into her IV. Then the second and third followed after another two minutes, then the fourth. He finished reversing the stasis process, pulling a small folded blanket out of the closet and tucking it around her in case the warming pad kicked off when she woke up. He'd never revived someone out of stasis himself before. And then there was nothing left to do. So he waited. 

  
  
  
Angelique woke slowly, her mind coming to wakefulness before the rest of her did. The chemicals from the stasis procedure were still in her system, and while she could begin the procedure to filter them through she didn't have the energy to increase the speed more than twofold. She increased the production of adrenaline through her system. After a few seconds she found herself able to open her eyes. 

Mason was near. She caught sight of the translucent white, wispy hair out of the corner of her eye. He must have started the stasis procedure himself, but then if that was the case… why had he stopped? Why had he reversed the procedure and allowed her to wake up? No restraints, either, although her weakness in and of itself was restraint enough. That was slowly starting to fade, though. She pushed more adrenaline through her system, increased the toxin filtration as much as she dared and shunting the toxins out of her body through the pores in her skin. Sweat began to break out, and she ignored it as a sign of a job well done. The white hair in the edge of her vision didn't move, but she could have sworn she heard a choked sob.

Finally she could sit up. Mason was sitting near her, elbows propped on his knees, face in his hands. No shoulder-shaking, no more noises, just silence, as though he simply didn't want to see what happened next. Angelique carefully slid the tubes out of her, swung her legs over the side of the pallet, and turned to face him.

"Mason," she said, soft and gentle as a touch to a sleeping baby. "Mason?"

He looked up. His eyes were as clear and cold as they always had been. "You're awake."

"Thanks to you…" she briefly thought about trying to stand then thought better of it. "Of course, it's thanks to you that I was there in the first place."

"We've been over this," he said, sounding almost angry and definitely tired, not looking at her anymore. 

"You couldn't do it, could you?" she said at the same time. "You couldn't put me in a stasis pod. You couldn't lock me away forever, or until someone's whim thawed me out again. Why?"

"You could have gotten out," he still wasn't looking at her, "The security risk…"

"Bullshit," she spat angrily at him, and he grimaced. "You know once I'm unconscious I can't do anything. Security risk be damned. Why did you reverse the process?"

He was silent for a long time. "As the old curse goes. I finally had everything that I could ever have wanted, and found I no longer wanted it."

"_Trés poétique_," she said in sarcastic French. It had been their secret language at GenomeX, and her soft voice soothed over his consciousness like a warm blanket, comforting. It hurt, too, for some reason he could never have explained. He grimaced again, still looking away. "_Mais vrais_," was all he said. Angelique glared at him, getting tired of this. "Mason." She switched back to English. "Mason, look at me. Regardez-moi," she commanded, leaning forward and trying to get him to meet her eyes. Too far forward: she slipped, tried to catch herself, and crashed to the cold artificial floor. Mason lunged to help her then pulled back abruptly, but not before she grabbed him by his Armani-clad forearms and looked him in the eye. "Why?" He let go abruptly enough that she crashed back to the floor, stood, and turned around. She watched, slowly pushing herself up. "_Je tu donnerai tout ce que tu désire, si tu m'as demande…_" I would have given you anything you wanted, if you had asked.

He wouldn't look at her. "You have no reason…" he said quietly. "I have no right."

"You have every right, you arrogant idiot," she snapped, and then wondered why he was smiling. 

"We were friends, before anything else. For ten years, we were friends. _Et tu as toujours besoin d'un ami, mon cher. Je ne peut pas tu délaisse si je le veux._" You were always in need of a friend. I couldn't have deserted you if I'd wanted to.

She looked away as his eyes widened slightly and his stance became tense. When he spoke again it was in English, and she understood why. Anything else had become too painful, as their sharp and defensive edges cut into each other. "You didn't tell me about a lot of things," was all he said. She shook her head slowly.

"I was scared," she sighed. "I was tired. It was all too much, everything with the experiments and with you and Adam, and… it was just too much. You were always too intense, never knew when to ease back. You could always have asked, but you never wanted to. You were always so proud and arrogant, thinking you were strong."

Angelique stood up slowly, using a wall for support. Mason slumped in defeat. She thought she heard him say "I didn't know what else to do…" but like before, he gave no sign either way when he looked at her again.

"All you had to ever do was ask," she repeated softly, and then in a moment of inspiration she reached out and touched his cheek. Cold synthetic material met her fingertips, but that didn't stop her mind. Biokinetic powers gave her insight into his crippled body, and she closed her eyes to focus better on what she wanted to do. It was a simple thing, really, but technology couldn't do it yet. She had to do it on her own. Slowly she coaxed the cells into renewal and replication. From somewhere (possibly her own body, she didn't know) she reintroduced leukocytes into his body, replenished his immune system. A thousand little fixes she made here and there, being thorough and quick. She'd done it often enough with FIV cats (and, once, an HIV+ human). It wasn't a permanent fix, but it would give him a week, ten days of normality. Then, slowly, it would wear off. 

As she told him so his eyes widened, startled. He looked almost afraid, or sad. Or maybe he was just as tired as she was. Her hand on his cheek felt the warmth as his body temperature elevated to healthier levels. She wanted to do so many things. She did none of them.

"It's a reprieve, nothing more," she forced herself to sound harsh as she turned away again and tottered towards the door. Mason made no move to stop her, not even when Brennan and Shalimar appeared in the doorway and looked as though they might rip his head right off. "I've done what I can for you. I've healed the damage done to your body. It's up to you to do the rest." 

Angelique forced skepticism and sarcasm into her voice, even though it felt like it would crack her throat coming out. "Not that you ever wanted any sort of human contact anyway. Maybe you're actually better off this way. It's certainly more fitting. No one and nothing can touch you; you can remain completely apart from everyone. Like you always wanted." 

Mason must have been suitably chagrined, because he allowed Brennan and Shalimar to walk up and assist Angelique without so much as a snide comment or dirty look. Shalimar looked at the man as though she wanted to tear his throat out, but a head-shake from Angelique directed her attention elsewhere. "We have a clear path out," Brennan said softly. "You gonna be okay?"

"Just help me a few more minutes, I'll be able to walk soon. And then I'll sleep for a week." Angelique could already feel the increased adrenaline pumping through her veins again.

"Better than sleeping forever," Shalimar commented, glaring over her shoulder at Eckhart. The white-haired man gave no response. 

"Let's just get out of here," Angelique requested, lacking the energy to keep the Mutant X'ers from doing something potentially rash that could get them all killed. 

"What about Eckhart?"

She didn't even need to look back. "He's not going to tell anyone," Angelique said heavily. "Trust me." She straightened up slightly, still leaning heavily on Brennan's and Shalimar's arms, but managing to mostly move under her own power. The corridor was deserted when they reached it, turning the corner and heading out to the helipad. Behind them she heard the conspicuous lack of footsteps, and wondered what Mason was thinking. 


	12. Take Your Bows

**All The Queen's Horses: Take Your Bows   
by Drucilla  
**

  
Author's Note: All done! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and especially to Sllea who kept giving me ideas. :) Still thinking up a sequel, I'll start posting when I figure it out. We'll see what that turns into. I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

"I don't know what he was thinking. I'm not the telepath, remember?" Angelique smiled wryly. Curled up in a blanket on the couch, she looked around at the walls of Sanctuary and thought wryly that if she had been in Adam's position, she wouldn't have made everything so damn… Star-Trek-like. It was nice, sanitized… and impersonal. 

Adam sat at the other end of the couch, lounging easily. Everyone else had gone to bed, or at least pretended to while trying not to make their curious glances at Angelique too obvious. "Well, you know him as well as the rest of us," he said, "Possibly best of all of us."

She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure I ever did. I think I saw what he wanted me to see, and nothing else. I can't believe I was so stupid… I can't believe I fell for it. For twenty-four years, I fell for it. And all this time he'd've just slapped me in a stasis pod if he'd known…" Angelique sighed. "I should have given the bastard syphilis," she said, although half-heartedly. 

Adam was silent for a minute. "He also brought you out of the stasis pod," he pointed out. "Which … well, he had no reason to do it. Maybe you were right about him all along."

Angelique stared at the horrid pattern on the couch. She wondered what had possessed Adam to make him buy it. "I don't know why he does what he does anymore. I don't know… what happened to him? Was he always this much of a bastard, or did… did it all happen after…" She wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it. The only one who blamed anyone for the incident was Mason, and he blamed Adam. But that, she thought, could be as much out of bitterness as fact.

"I don't know. I know it did change him. But I was never as close to him as you were, I don't think. Not really." He thought about it. "And if I was… what happened changed all that."

"What happened to him changed all of us, I think," Angelique said absently, and then burst into tears for no reason she could discern. Adam blinked at her, concerned, and then reached across the expanse of couch to pull her into his arms and rock her back and forth, attempting to be comforting.

"Why'd he do it?" she asked quietly, still sobbing. "Why does he do it? He never was prejudiced, he was too intelligent for that. And he never… I don't know. Why does he do it? And why did he to it to me? I thought he _cared._"

Adam sighed and rocked his friend, the beautiful young woman he had met so long ago, who had fallen in love with his best friend and not with him. The woman who, now hurt by that same once-friend, cried heart-brokenly in his arms. Life was cruel, Adam thought, and so was Eckhart. He wondered what he'd do if the other man stood in front of him. He wondered if he'd care if he broke Eckhart's damn neck. The thought that right now he probably wouldn't, scared the hell out of him.

Angelique shifted slightly, and Adam shifted to accommodate her. She had been silent for a little while at least, though he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"Adam…"

"Angel?"

She took a deep breath. "Would you… do me a favor?"

  
  
  
Mason was sitting at his desk when the other man entered. He didn't even look up, although his tone of voice when he finally spoke was decidedly annoyed. "Remind me to fire the entire security team for today."

"_She_ let me in," Adam said, knowing Mason would know who he meant. "She pulled some strings. She had a message for you."

Mason looked up, caught by surprise by the last person he'd expected and, at a distance, the only person who could surprise him that well. "I didn't think she still had access to the facilities."

"Only rudimentary access, but that was enough." Adam was staring at Mason with a look that promised dire futures. It wasn't a glare so much as a statement of fact: you hurt someone I care about, and you will pay the price for that. Mason leaned back, thinking how far they'd come since they'd parted company. Whether it was forward or backward travel, he didn't know.

"Well? What's the message?" he asked, when Adam didn't speak. "She didn't send you here just to punch me in the face. Again."

"Don't tempt me," Adam said very quietly. That, in and of itself, made Mason take notice. "She sent me to give you this."

An envelope landed on Mason's desk. His name was on the front, in careful (yet somehow shaky) calligraphy. Middle-range hand-made parchment, plain black ink. He recognized the writing. "What is it?" he asked, looking up at Adam. The other man didn't say anything. Mason sighed. "All right, you've delivered your message, now get out."

Adam thought about staying, and making sure Mason read the letter. He thought about what she had said. _He'll read it. His curiosity will move him to. He'll read it without you forcing him to._ He thought about everything that had happened the previous night. "You had better be worth it."

Mason arched eyebrows upwards at Adam. "Excuse me?"

"Letting you live had better be worth hearing her cry all last night over you," Adam said. He wasn't sure when the last time he'd felt so murderous was. "Because if it would make her feel better, I would hunt you down and kill you myself."

If this bit of information affected Mason he gave no sign. He watched Adam for a second, and then. "You know where the door is. Use it." 

Adam stared at Mason for a few moments longer and then walked out.

  
  
  
Mason stared at the letter on his desk for nearly half an hour before reading it. When he finally did pick it up he handled it gingerly, as though it would crumble from his fingers at the slightest provocation. He stared at the writing on the front, remembering everything that had been written by that hand. He didn't want to open it, not after the last few days. He set it down again, and resumed working.

The letter stared at him like a guilty conscience. He glared at it, piled forms and reports on it, and kept working. It glared through the stack of paper. He really didn't want to read it. Finally, he had to. The letter was depressingly thin. If he was going to be ranted at, this wasn't enough paper to do it on. Thin letters from her were always the more dangerous ones. It didn't take many words to say "Stay the hell away from me." He opened the letter and read it.

_Mason --  
I loved you.  
We were friends, once upon a time. I think I fell in love with you the day I first arrived, it only took me a few years to notice. You never seemed to want that from me, though, so I never told you. I thought we'd have all the time in the world. Then you and Adam began fighting, and I didn't want to be a point of contention. You never saw me as I was, only as I could be used against Adam. So I left.  
Seeing you again was like having the sun shine down on me after fourteen long years of rain and cold. I hadn't missed you so much until I saw you again. And I thought that, with the control I had gained over the biokinesis, that I at last had a solution, however temporary, to your condition. I allowed myself to hope that I could tell you what I should have told you years ago, but was too afraid to. At least, I hoped that we could be friends again.   
Instead, you assumed from two minutes of conversation that I had betrayed you to someone you see as your worst enemy, you were silent for three days, and then you threw me into a stasis pod. Really, Mason. You could have just sent flowers.  
I don't know if I want to rip you apart with my bare hands and let my horses trample you, or just never see you again. I don't even know why I'm sending this letter. Except to extend you the same courtesy I am extending Adam and his students, because and only because of the friendship we shared once. If you have need, come to the farm. Not as a GSA, not as a representative of GenomeX, but as yourself, as Mason. Come to the farm, and we will talk, and I will try and help you.  
Do anything else and I __will_ run you over with my biggest, heaviest horse.  
I wish things had been different. I wish we had both handled this differently. I guess we'll just have to live with things as they are now.  
All my love, even now…

The signature was barely legible. He avoided the part of his thought processes that told him why, and what the damp smudges on the paper were. Carefully, he set the letter down on the farthest point of the desk from him. And then he leaned back in the chair, turned off the intercom, and closed his eyes.


End file.
